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EDITED BY 



MKS OLIPHANT 



PEOSPECTUS. 



'l^HE cordial reception given by the public to the Series 
of " Ancient Classics for English Readers " has 
confirmed the intention of the Publishers to carry out a 
kindred Series, which it is believed will not be less 
useful or less welcome, and in which an attempt will be 
made to introduce the great writers of Europe in a similar 
manner to the many readers who probably have a perfect 
acquaintance with their names, without much knowledge 
of their works, or their place in the literature of the 
modern world. The Classics of Italy, France, Germany, 
and Spain are nearer to us in time, and less separated in 
sentiment, than the still more famous Classics of anti- 
quity ; and if foreign travel is, as everybody allows, a 
great means of enlarging the mind, and dispersing its 
prejudices, an acquaintance with those works in which 
the great nations who are our neighbours have expressed 
their highest life, and by which their manners of thinking 
have been formed, cannot but possess equal advantages. 
A man who would profess to know England without 
knowing something of Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, and 
the great writers who have followed them, could form but 
an imperfect idea of the national mind and its capabili- 
ties : and so no amount of travel can make us acquainted 



with Italy, while Dante, Tasso, and her great historians 
remain unknown to us; nor can the upheavings of French 
Society and the mental characteristics of the nation be 
comprehended without Voltaire, Moli^re, Eousseau, and 
other great names beside. Neither is Germany herself 
without Goethe and Schiller : nor Spain recognisable 
deprived of that noble figure of Cervantes, in whom lives 
the very genius of the nation. This great band it is our 
design to give such an account of as may bring them 
within the acquaintance of the English reader, whose zeal 
may not carry him the length of the often thankless study 
of translations, and whose readings in a foreign language 
are not easy enough to be pleasant. "We are aware that 
there are difficulties in our way in this attempt which did 
not lie in the path of the former Series, since in the 
section of the world for which we write there are many 
more readers of French and German than of Greek and 
Latin ; but, on the other hand, there is no educated class 
supremely devoted to the study of Continental Classics, 
as is the case in respect to the Ancient ; and even the 
greatest authority in the learned matter of a Greek text 
might be puzzled by Jean Paul Richter, or lose himself 
in the mysteries of Dante's 'Paradise' The audience to 
which we aspire is, therefore, at once wider and narrower 
than that to which the great treasures of Hellenic and 
Roman literature are unfamiliar ; and our effort will be 
to present the great Italian, the great Frenchman, the 
famous German, to the reader, so as to make it plain to 
him what and how they wrote, something of how they 
lived, and more or less of their position and influence 
upon the literature of their country. 



The Volumes published of this Series contain— 



DANTE, . 
VOLTAIRE, 
PASCAL, . 
PETRARCH, 
GOETHE, . 
MOLIERE, . 
MONTAIGNE, . 
RABELAIS, 
CALDERON, 
SAINT SIMON, 



... By the Edito**. 
By Major-General E. B. Hamley. 
By Principal Tulloch. 
By Henry Reeve, C.B. 
By A. Hayward, Q.C. 
By Mrs Oliphant and F. Tarver, M.A. 
By Rev, W. Lucas Collins, M.A. 
By Walter Besant. 
, . . By E. J, Hasell. 

. By Clifton W. Collins, M.A. 



Volumes in preparation — 

CERVANTES, By the Editor. 

MADAME DE SEVIGNE and ) 

>• , .By Miss Thackeray. 
MADAME DE STAEL, ) 



gaxziQix dlassks fax Snglislj flcatos 



EDITED BY 

MES OLIPHAKT 



SAINT SIMON 



SAIIsTT SIMOK 



BY 



CLIFTON ^\^^pLLINS, M. A 



n... 




PHILADELPHIA : 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO 

1880. 

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CONTENTS. 



CHAP. 

1. INTRODUCTION, . 

II. SAINT SIMON'S FAMILY, 

III. SAINT SIMON IN THE ARMY, 

IV. VERSAILLES, 
V, PRINCES AND PRINCESSES, 

VL MADAME DE MAINTENON, 

VII. SAINT Simon's life at court, 

VIIL JESUITS AND JANSENISTS, 

IX. THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, 
X. THE PROVINCES, . 

XL MEUDON AND MONSEIGNEUR, 
XIL THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF BURGUNDY, 
XIIL THE LAST DAYS OP LOUIS XIV., 
XIV. THE REGENT, .... 

XV. CARDINAL DUBOIS, 
XVL SAINT SIMON IN RETIREMENT, . 



PAGE 
1 

24 

30 

42 

57 

66 

84 

99 

122 

136 

144 

155 

168 

183 

199 

213 



SAINT SIMON. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION. 



"A SECRET historian; a geometrician, diseased in body 
and mind ; a good easy man, always dreaming, and 
treated as a dreamer, — there you have the three artists 
of the seventeenth century. They have startled and 
perhaps a little shocked us all. La Fontaine, the 
happiest, was the most perfect ; Pascal, Christian and 
philosopher, the most elevated; Saint Simon, given up 
entirely to his fancy, is the most powerful and the most 
true." ^ This is high praise, coming as it does from 
an accomplished critic like M. Taine, and must sound 
strange to many who know little of Saint Simon beyond 
the fact that he wrote memoirs of Louis XIY.'s reign. 
Most of the OTeat TVTiters of that ao;e are familiar names 
enough to us. La Fontaine's Fables, Pascal's ' Pensees,' 
Fenelon's ' Telemaque,' the plays of Moliere and Racine, 

1 Taine, Essais, p. 297. 
F.C. — X. A 



2 SAINT SIMON. 

the sermons of Bossuet and Boiirdaloue, and the letters of 
Madame de Sevigne, have their place in most libraries ; 
and, even in the form of selections or extracts, have pro- 
bably been read to some extent by most persons who 
have read French at all. But Saint Simon, whose genius 
was in its own way as remarkable as theirs, and who has 
given us in his incomparable Memoirs a living picture 
of the old regime, is still, we believe, almost unknown, 
except to the historian or reviewer. To ordinary readers 
in this country he is still the shadow of a name, and 
nothing more. Even if we do not go so far as to ask, as 
some literary lady once asked, "Why was he made a 
saint 1 " he is not unfrequently confused with his name- 
sake and descendant, the Saint Simon of revolution- 
ary fame ; and the philosophic friend of Eobespierre is 
credited with having written the memoirs of his an- 
cestor — the aristocrat of aristocrats. 

At the same time it is not surprising that Saint 
Simon should be so little read. The fact is, that 
between the pressure of business and the whirl of modern 
society, few men have time to read anything beyond the 
reviews and periodicals of the day — if indeed they can 
find time to read so much ; and supposing that, in a fit of 
self -improvement, they take some classic from their book- 
shelves, or turn back to the literature of the eighteenth 
century, the last book that they would be likely to select 
would be a set of French memoirs in twenty volumes, 
digressive and discursive, and difficult to follow from the 
obscurity of the style and the variety of contemporary 
allusions. But the great drawback in his case (and it is 
the one unpardonable sin in a writer) is his length. Even 
Macaulay, who was credited with reading Photius for 



THE MEMOIRS. 3 

pleasure, confesses that he found Saint Simon "wearisome. 
" The good parts," he declared, on reading the Memoirs 
a second time, " were as good as ever, but the road from 
fountain to fountain lay through a very dry desert." 
An ordinary reader may well be excused for shrinking 
from a task that tried Macaulay's patience ; indeed it 
may be doubted if any one in this generation (excepting 
perhaps Saint Simon's learned editor, M. Cheruel) has 
ever even tried to wade through those long and dreary 
chapters describing the ceremonial of the Spanish Court, 
the different classes of Spanish grandees, and the exact 
position and privileges of the French dukes and the 
Parliament of Paris. These tedious digressions spring 
from a wealvucss inlicrent in Saint Simon's character — 
his mania for all questions connected with rank and 
pedigrees of the nobility. He seems indeed to have had 
the whole French peerage by heart. All their titles and 
dignities were intensely interesting to him; and he takes 
a singular delight in tracing the exact family history and 
relationship of nearly every personage he mentions in his 
jMemoirs. The Baron Von-Thunder-Ten-Tronckh himself 
could not have been more exacting; and if there is a 
blot in any one of the " seize quartiers " of the family 
coat of arms. Saint Simon is sure to put his finger on it. 
For example, when the Abbe de Soubise was about to 
be received into the Chapter of Strasburg, Saint Simon 
at once goes back to the Abbe's great - grandmother. 
Who was she ? "A daughter of that cook, formerly 
scullion, and afterwards lackey to Henry lY. ! " Again, 
when the Princess des Ursins' brother was about to make 
what was thought a mesalliance, Saint Simon writes : 
" Madame des Ursins cried out as if their own mother 



4 SAINT SIMON. 

had not been Aubry, their grandmother Bouhier daughter 
of the treasurer of a savings-bank, and their great-grand- 
mother Eeaune." So too, when Cardinal Alberoni wrote 
in a grand style of his dignity as a Roman citizen, and 
talked of " our Tacitus " — "A Roman, forsooth ! " says 
Saint Simon ; " why, he belonged to a little village near 
Bayonne, where his father sold cabbages, and he wormed 
himself into favour by making cheese -salads for Yen- 
dome." Even the " affaire du bonnet," to which Saint 
Simon points again and again, as if it involved the 
gravest constitutional principles, was really only a trivial 
question of etiquette — whether the President should 
wear his cap on his head or place it before him on the 
table, when he addressed the peers in Parliament. 

As we shall find, during the first few years of his life 
at Court he was incessantly occupied in trying these 
questions of precedence, and in questioning the genuine- 
ness of some of the proudest titles in France. It seems, 
on the face of it, a little absurd that a young duke of 
recent creation (for Saint Simon was only the second 
who bore the title) should be continually taking up 
arms against " new men " — or " mushrooms of fortune," 
as he terms them ; but this firm belief in his own 
order — morgue aristocratique — is the key-note to his 
political career as well as to his character. The more 
he studied history, he tells us, the more firmly he was 
convinced that it was the dukes, and the dukes alone, 
who should or could save France in the future, as they 
had saved her in the past. Mischief enough had already 
been done during " the long reign of the vil bour- 
geois" and it was the peers, with the dukes at their 
head, who should direct the councils of their sovereign. 



THE MEMOIKS. 5 

In fact, Saint Simon would have revived the aristocracy 
of the feudal system, which had perished some centuries 
before he was horn, and have transferred the institutions 
of Philip Augustus to the reign of Louis XI Y. We 
shall find that in all his political schemes, hoth in con- 
nection with the young Duke of Burgundy and with 
the Regent Orleans, he constantly reverted to this ideal 
constitution, — -a hierarchy culminating in the ducal rank, 
raised far above the lower orders of nobility, and having 
its place on the steps of the throne itself. This day-dream 
— for it was nothing more — had a special fascination for 
him, and he alludes to it in a hundred scattered passages ; 
but it is almost unnecessary to add, that of all the wild 
and fanciful schemes ever imagined by philosopher or 
politician, this was perhaps the wildest and most hope- 
lessly impossible. 

Saint Simon either looked back to the past, or he 
looked forward to the future. Of the present time, and 
of the men of his own generation, he always speaks with 
the utmost bitterness. Society — that is, the Court, as 
he saw it — seemed to consist chiefly of rogues and rascals 
(^fripons et scelerats), and, generally speaking, the most 
successful were in his eyes the greatest scoundrels. On 
whichever side he looked, he could find nothing but the 
vilest passions, the meanest motives, the basest princi- 
ples ; men employing their lives in some miserable in- 
trigue for some miserable object — wasting their talents 
and squandering their fortunes, and supplanting their 
neighbours by superior villany. And of all detestable 
characters, he paints in the strongest colours those of 
unprincipled priests like Dubois and I.e Tellier, and 
unscrupulous lawyers like. Harlay and Maisons 



6 SAINT SIMON. 

Of a few intimate personal friends he speaks in 
terms of almost unqualified praise. N^othing is too 
good for his spiritual adviser, La Trappe; for his 
father-in-law, Marshal Lorges ; for his friend and con- 
fidant, the Duke of Beauvilliers ; and for his young 
hero, the Duke of Burgundy. But such men were as 
the very salt of the earth — the few good grains among 
the host of tares — and their solitary virtues only height- 
ened the contrast of the corruption and profligacy around 
them. The strange thing is, that Saint Simon singles 
out for special attack precisely those men who were 
among the most distinguished and esteemed of their 
own generation. Among them we find such names as 
JSToailles, the gay and fortunate diplomatist ; Antin, the 
most charming and versatile of courtiers ; Yendome, the 
idol of the army, and the prince of boon companions ; 
Villars, the hero of fifty battles ; Eochefoucauld, the 
type of a g7'and seigneur. These men are each in their 
turn branded by Saint Simon with every epithet of scorn 
and hatred, and held up by him to everlasting ridicule. 
We have only to refer to the marginal summaries drawn 
up by his own hands, and we find that he has almost 
exhausted the vocabulary of abuse in describing their 
characters. Wickedness, perfidy, avarice, monstrous in- 
gratitude, hateful obstinacy, criminal folly, faults upon 
faults, are some of the phases applied by him to the 
statesmen and soldiers of his time ; and h& describes the 
Due de E'oailles — -who, if we may believe his apologist, 
has as much claim to our respect as Saint Simon him- 
self — as "the most faithful and the most perfect copy 
of the serpent that tempted Eve, — so far as a man can 
approach the qualities of the chief of the fallen angels." 



THE MEMOIRS. 7 

But even this language is mild and moderate compared 
with that which he employs in describing such men as 
Yendome and Dubois, or such women as the Regent's 
daughter, whom he seems to have hated with the per- 
fect hatred . of the old covenant. It is then that his 
indignation masters him, and his language becomes 
Scriptural in the vehemence of his denunciation. Indeed, 
we know of nothing since the days of the second Phil- 
ippic so bitter, so scathing and so incisive, except per- 
haps Junius's indictment of the Duke of Grafton, or 
Macaulay's description of Barere. 

In Saint Simon's case, time, instead of softening, seems 
only to have embittered the unrelenting hostility with 
which he pursues his enemies through their lives and 
after their deaths — 

" Eternal as their own, his hate 

Surmounts the bounds of mortal fate, 
And dies not with the dead." 

He dwells with an irrepressible satisfaction upon every 
incident in their decline and fall. B"e gloats over the 
closing scenes in their career, and he draws from their 
history the solemn warning of guilt followed by its at- 
tendant punishment, which, like the I^emesis or Ate of 
the Greek drama, strikes do^\'ii the insolent and guilty 
wretch in the very plenitude of his triumph. He is not 
surprised at the awful fate that befell the rich and 
learned Maisons, and destroyed him and his family 
through three generations. Such destruction was only 
the fitting reward of his impiety. So again, when the 
Bishop of Soissons died suddenly and terribly, — it was 
the judgment of God on him, says Saint Simon, for hav- 



8 SAINT SIMON. 

ing sold himself to the Jesuits, and for having signed 
the " Constitution." 

History, he thought, was full of such moral lessons to 
him who read it as it should be read ; and to give due 
effect to these lessons was part of the duty of the his- 
torian. " To him who considers the events which 
history records in their real and first origin, their degrees, 
and their progress, there is perhaps no religious book — 
next to Holy Scripture itself, and the great book of 
nature always open before our eyes — which so greatly 
raises our thoughts to God, which so continually keeps 
us in wonder and astonishment, or which shows us so 
clearly our nothingness and our blindness." 

But while he had this exalted idea of the purpose of 
history, he never seems to have realised his own respon- 
sibility as a historian. He wrote always furiously and 
recklessly — neither weighing his words nor measuring 
tlie effect of his SAreeping denunciations of the men and 
society of his time. Generally speaking, a \mter is 
induced to measure liis statements and qualify his 
ojDinions by the ordinary restraints of publicity and 
criticism : " to-morrow the critics will come," and it is 
the fear of this "to-morrow," and of its pains and 
penalties, that acts as a safeguard against rash attacks on 
personal reputations. But the man who writes, as Saint 
Simon wrote, in the secrecy of his chamber, conscious 
that, in his time, no eye but his own will ever see liis 
manuscripts ; and knowing, as he knew, that his work 
will only be read when he is himself far beyond the 
reach of praise or censure, — such a man Avrites without 
scruple or responsibility, with the curb loosened from 
his tongue and with the bridle taken off his lips. There 



THE MEMOIRS. 9 

can be no action for libel with the dead ; friends and 
foes will be equally powerless to defend or attack him ; 
the verdict of posterity — whatever that verdict may be 
— can never reach him; and his fame will come, if it 
comes at all, from a generation that never knew him. 

** Son laurier tardif n'ombrags que sa tombe." 

Such a writer will be free to indulge in all the luxury 
of scorn and invective, to gratify every personal pique, 
to avenge himself on those who have insulted and in- 
jured him in his lifetune, by leaving them in their turn 
pilloried for ever in a fool's paradise. And it is of this 
easy and not very dignified method of attack and retali- 
ation that St Simon has undouljtedly availed himself. 
He has left his Memoirs beliind iiim, as a mine is left in 
a deserted fortress, on tlie chance of an explosion that 
may ruin and destroy tlie enemy. This is what Chateau- 
briand meant when he said that " Saint Simon ecrit a la 
diable pour rinimortalite ! " 

As a matter of fact. Saint Sunon dared no more have 
published his Memoirs in his own lifetime, than the 
author of 'Junius' dared to drop his mask. We can 
fancy the storm of indignation that would have broken 
out, Avhen the noblest families in France found themselves 
traduced and maligned by this "little man-devouring 
duke," as Argenson called him ; when the Jesuits found 
worse things said of their Order by their supposed friend 
than had ever been said of them by their avowed enemy, 
Pascal ; when his colleagues in office found their abil- 
ities disparaged and their policy assailed by the man 
whom they regarded with some justice as the most in- 
competent politician of their number. " If these Memoirs 



10 SAINT SIMON. 

ever see the light," wrote their author, " I doubt not 
that they will cause a prodigious revulsion of feeling ; " 
and it was fortunate for his personal safety that no acci- 
dent ever betrayed their existence to his own generation. 
He would certainly have found himself in the Bastille 
before many days had passed — already being, as is 
proved by the songs and lampoons of the time, probably 
the most unpopular man in France. That he was him- 
self fully sensible of the risk he ran is shown by his 
intense anxiety that some papers he had lent the Duke 
of Burgundy should not fall into the king's hands. "A 
writer who writes the truth, and nothing but the truth, 
must have lost his senses," he says, "if he allows it even 
to be suspected that he is writing. His work ought to 
be guarded by keys and the surest bolts, and to pass 
thus guarded to his heirs after him, who in then turn 
would do wisely to let it abide for one or two genera- 
tions, and not to let it see the light till time has buried 
all resentments." 

The difficulty that meets us on the threshold of his 
Memoirs is what to believe and what not to beheve. 
Knowing how genuine and sincere Saint Simon is even 
in his hatreds, we should be disposed to accept all he 
has told us with implicit confidence. But then, unfortu- 
nately, we find his authority on so many matters of fact 
discredited, and in some cases disproved, by contempo- 
rary witnesses, that considerable suspicion rests on these 
cotmtless anecdotes and hons Mstoires scattered through 
his pages. Some of these stories, so gravely recounted 
by him, are as wonderful in their way as anything that 
Herodotus heard from the Egyptian priests; indeed, 
since the days of the Father of History, it would be 



THE MEMOIRS. H 

difficult to find another writer so inquisitive, so credid- 
ous, and so garrulously-given as Saint Simon. We can- 
not say that his stories are not true, because he is often 
the only writer who has recorded them, and we have no 
means of proving either their truth or falsehood. But 
presumptive evidence is in many instances against them, 
and-leaves us no alternative but to class them with those 
delightful stories of our childhood that enlivened the 
dreariest narratives, — Clarence's Malmsey butt, Tell's 
apple, Cambronne's famous speech, Louis XVI. 's last 
words — what Mommsen calls " the rubbish - heap of 
tradition," or what Mr Hay ward places among " the 
mock pearls of history." 

When, for instance. Saint Simon tells us of the farrier 
of Salon and the marvellous vision that he saw, and 
how he told it to the king, and what the king said of it ; 
or of the magpie that appeared to La Yaremie, and its 
miraculous speech, and how La Varenne at once took to 
his bed and died, — all this reads like the headings of 
chapters from the " Morte d' Arthur." So, again, when 
he describes so graphically how Marshal Yillars was left 
alone under the tree at Eriedlingen, weeping and tearing 
his hair for the battle that he believed lost, but was 
really all the time won by his lieutenant, — the description 
is as grotesque, and probably about as true, as Juvenal's 
picture of the one-eyed Hannibal riding on the last of 
his elephants. In the same way the hunting adventure 
that led to the death of Fargues, so dramatically told, — 
the story of the black princess who lived in a convent, 
and was thought to be some great personage {"fort 
emgmatique,''^ says Saint Simon) — the poisoning of 
Henrietta of Orleans — the secret marriage of Cardinal 



12 SAINT SIMON. 

Dubois — the pathetic death of Eacine of a broken heart, 
— all these romantic tales must, we fear, be consigned 
to the same borderland between fact and fiction as the 
legends of ancient Eome or the historical plays of Shake- 
speare. But which is fact and which is fiction in this 
region of uncertainties, it is not within the province of 
this volume to determine. We must take Saint Simon 
as we find him^ and, unless he is clearly and flagrantly 
wrong, leave him the responsibility of his own stories. 

It is a pity that there should be even a cpiestion of 
doubt in his case, — that a writer with all his keenness 
of observation and marvellous powers of description, 
with almost every faculty needed to make a great his- 
torian, should fail in the one essential point — historical 
truth. In this respect his very talents have been a snare 
to him. His fondness for anything graphic and pictur- 
esque, his appreciation of a good story when he heard 
one (and we can trace this taste in the countless hon 
mots and anecdotes that he regales us with), his eager- 
ness always to point the moral and adorn the tale, when 
he had the chance of doing so, — all this inclined him to 
take the picturesque and poetical side of what he saw 
and heard, rather than confine himself to the dull and 
prosaic region of commonplace. 

Again, Saint Simon seems to have been wanting in 
another gift, necessary to the man who tells us the his- 
tory of his times — the capacity for examining and sifting 
evidence. He evidently believed implicitly whatever his 
friends chose to tell him ; indeed he is candid enough 
to give us several instances in which Orleans or Lauzun 
practised on his credulity, and we can well believe that 
these were not solitary exceptions. " My character," he 



THE MEMOIRS. 13 

says, " upright, frank, free, natural, and far too simple, 
was expressly made for being taken in the snares." All 
the gossip of the back-stairs, all the scandalous stories 
that circulated in the (Eil de Boeuf or on the terraces of 
Marly, all the ill-natured tales told him by his brother- 
in-law, Lauzun, whom he declares to be a perfect treas- 
ury of anecdotes, — Saint Simon heard and duly noted 
down evening after evening. Then again, he constantly 
cross-questioned the king's surgeon and the king's valets 
— much as Mr Greville cross-questioned old Batchelor — 
and we may imagine that what he heard in this way did 
not lose in the transmission. But it was just this kind 
of information, got in this underhand manner, that he 
considers, as he is careful to tell us, the most important 
and valuable of all testimony. These men, he says, 
— Bontems, and Bloin, and Marechal — were always in 
the royal bedroom or presence-chamber, and were all 
eyes and ears. 

He frequently describes interviews,' in his dramatic 
fashion, which could not possibly have been known to 
more than two or three people, and which, it might be 
supposed, would have been kept profoundly secret by them 
— for their own safety and reputation, if for no other 
reason. But nothing seems to have been hidden from 
this keen and vigilant observer. He was as ubiquitous 
and omniscient as those scandalmongers described by 
Plautus ; ■"■ and even the circumstances of a tete-a-tete in 
the king's private cabinet or the Eegent's bedroom seem, 
by some means or other, to have reached Saint Simon's 
ears. To take an instance at random : we are told how 
" Monsieur's " first wife — Henrietta, daughter of Charles 
1 Plautus, Trinummus, i. 2. 



14 SAINT SIMON. 

I. of England — died suddenly and terribly, in the prime 
of her youth and beauty, in 1670, after only a few hours' 
illness. Bossuet has painted for us, in a famous sermon, 
the confusion and terror at Versailles when the Court 
was awaked at midnight by the cry of " Madcmie se 
meurt,'' and then of " Madame est morte ; " and Saint 
Simon gives, in his own manner, what was probably 
the popular version of her death. The king, who was 
greatly shocked by what had happened, suspected foul 
play on the part of some of the dissolute hangers-on in 
Monsieur's household, and before dawn the same morn- 
ing sent for Brissac, lieutenant of his guards : — 

"He told him to choose six body-guards, trusty men, whose 
secrecy could be depended on, and send them to seize the 
house- steward, and bring him to his cabinet by the back- 
stairs. This was done before daybreak. As soon as the king 
perceived him, he ordered Brissac and the chief valet to re- 
tire, and putting on a countenance and tone likely to cause 
the greatest terror — 

" ' My friend,' said he, looking at the man from head to 
foot, ' listen to me carefully : if you confess everything, and 
only answer the truth in what I wish to know, — whatever 
you have done, T pardon you, and the matter shall never 
be mentioned. But take care not to conceal the least thing 
from me, for if you do so, you are a dead man before you 
leave the room. Has Madame been poisoned ? ' 

" * Yes, Sf re,' he answered. 

" ' And who has poisoned her, and how was it done ? ' 

"He replied that it was the Chevalier de Lorraine who 
had sent the poison to Beuvron and to Effiat, and told the 
king all I have just written. Then the king, redoubling his 
assurance of pardon and his menaces of death — 

" ' And my brother, did he know ? ' 

"*No, Sire; none of us three were fools enough to tell 



THE MEMOIRS. 15 

him about it. He can never keep a secret : he would have 
ruined us all.' 

"At this answer the king gave a great 'Ha!' like a man 
oppressed by a weight, and who all at once breathes again. 

<« ' Very well,' said he, ' that is all I wanted to know. But 
are you positive of what you say? Do you assure me dis- 
tinctly it is so ? ' 

" He then called back Brissac, and ordered him to escort 
the man part of his way, when all at once he let him go at 
liberty." 

The whole scene is probably a fiction, for there is the 
clearest evidence that the Princess Henrietta was not 
poisoned at all ; but it illustrates so well Saint Simon's 
manner of treating a story that interested him, that we 
have given it just as it stands. Most writers would have 
contented themselves with recording the fact that Louis 
was supposed to have sent for his brother's steward and 
wrung a confession from him ; but Saint Simon tells it 
all as dramatically as if he had been himself hidden 
behind the tapestry, and heard every word that passed 
in this strange interview. And it is the same through- 
out the Memoirs. Wherever he can, he throws his nar- 
rative into the form of a dialogue, and these dialogues 
are so real and lifelike, that, excepting in Balzac and 
"Walter Scott, we know of nothing like them in romance 
or history. We should have been inclined to have classed 
them with the fictitious speeches in Livy or Thucydides ; 
but Saint Simon claims for them a far higher authen- 
ticity. They are, he expressly says, the faithful reports 
of actual speeches, written sur le champ, and losing 
rather than gaining in effect by being written instead of 
spoken. And as far as his own speeches are concerned, 
we can quite imagine that the fire and force of his 



16 SAINT SIMON. 

natural eloquence could scarcely be reproduced in writ- 
ing, especially in some of his stormy interviews with 
ISToailles and the Regent, where the concentrated passion 
of the speaker breathes through every line of his remon- 
strance or invective, and makes one almost regret that he 
could not have lived a century later and enlivened a 
modern parliamentary debate. 

Among the critics of his own country, from Yoltaire 
downwards, Saint Simon has found nearly as many 
enemies as friends. Both the Due de Noailles and M. 
Theophile Lavallee pronounce his personal prejudices 
to be stronger than his sense of truth ; M. Monty has 
written an essay to show that he was sour and cross- 
grained in character; M. Cheruel, in his learned work, 
tells us that he is prejudiced, inconsistent, partial, 
credulous, and a fabulist rather than a historian. But, 
on the other hand, there is another school of critics, 
beginning with Villemain and Marmontel, who have set 
him on a pinnacle above every other prose ^vriter of his 
time. By these admirers he is declared to be caustic as 
Le Sage, pathetic as Racine, picturesque as Tacitus. Taine, 
as has been seen, ranks him with Pascal and La Fon- 
taine ; and Sainte Beuve places him alongside of Bossuet 
and Moliere. Praise cannot go much beyond this ; 
still, it is worth while quoting the great critic's last 
panegyric on his favourite author : — 

" You talk of Tacitus, who has admirably condensed, 
worked up, kneaded, cooked and recooked at the [midnight] 
lamp, who has gilded with a sombre tint his burning and 
bitter pictures, — do not repent. Frenchmen, of having had 
among you in the heart of Court life at Versailles, and ever 
on the track of the human quarry, this little duke with the 
piercing eye, cruel, insatiable, always on the chase, ferreting 



THE MEMOIRS. 17 

about present everywhere, swooping on his prey, and laying 
waste on all sides. Thanks to him, — a Tacitus with natural 
humour and with unbridled fancy, — we have nothing to envy 
in the earlier writer. And what is more, the vein of comedy, 
which he has so boldly scattered through his Memoirs, has 
given us in him a Tacitus a la Shakespeare." ^ 

It only remains to say something as to the history of 
these famous Memoirs, — how they were originally written, 
and how they have descended to us. As is well known. 
Saint Simon amused himself in his old age by making 
notes in an interleaved copy of Dangeau's Memoirs, but 
it may be doubted whether (as has been thought) " he 
condescended to borrow from Dangeau by a curious kind 
of plagiarism." ^ The two writers had absolutely nothing 
in common beyond the fact that their memoirs related 
to the same period ; and they differed so entirely in their 
method and their manner of treating the same subjects, 
that they cannot even be compared. It may be safely 
said that, if anything, Dangeau owes far more to Saint 
Simon than Saint Simon owes to Dangeau ; for the only 
readable portions of those twenty octavo volumes, which 
M. Feuillet de Conches has so laboriously edited, are 
the notes and illustrations added by Saint Simon. Dan- 
geau's Memoirs themselves are as dull and uninterest- 
ing as pages from the ' Court Circular ' or the ' London 
Gazette.' "The king took medicine;" "Monseigneur 
went out wolf -hunting ; " "Madame passed the after- 
noon with. Mademoiselle Bessola;" — and so on, page 
after page, and volume after volume. " It is difficult," 
as Saint Simon says, " to understand how a man could 

1 Sahite Beiive, Nouveaux Liindis, x. 263. 

^ Reeve's Royal and RepubUcan France, i. 126. 

F.C. — X. B 



18 SAINT SIMON. 

have had the patience and perseverance to write a work 
like this every day for fifty years — so dry,* so meagre, 
so constrained, and so literally matter-of-fact." 

]^or again does it seem clear, as many editors suppose, 
that Saint Simon's "additions" to Dangeau's Memohs 
were the basis of his own ; indeed it may be questioned 
whether he even thought of annotating Dangeau's Me- 
moirs till his own were in a fair way of completion. He 
tells us expressly that it was his reading the memoirs of 
the last century that first suggested the idea of his writ- 
ing his own; that he began his journal in 1694, when 
he was a young lieutenant encamped with Marshal 
Lorges's army on the Rhine. In 1699, again, we find 
him writing to the Abbot of La Trappe, to ask his 
advice (as he always did) in a matter of conscience. 
He has been writing memoirs, he tells La Trappe, of 
which "a considerable part is finished," and in which "the 
reputations of thousands of people are compromised ; " 
and he asks for some rule by which he can speak the 
truth without wounding his conscience.- What answer 
was returned we have no means of knowing; but as 
Saint Simon sent him his account of the Luxemburg 
lawsuit,^ La Trappe had the opportunity, at any rate, 
of forming an opinion as to the tone and spirit of the 
remainder. 

In any case, from that time until 1723 (nearly thirty 
years) Saint Simon continued day after day, or rather 
evening after evening, secretly taking notes of all that 
passed before him, — even writing down the actual words 
of the speeches used. After some striking scene at 
Court — that after Monseigneur's death, for instance, 

1 See p. 35. 



THE MEMOIRS. 19 

which Sainte Beuve pronounces to be unrivalled in his- 
tory — he woftld sit in his dark cabinet at the back of 
his suite of rooms, wTitmg fast and furiously, without 
resting to polish or correct, careless as to whether his 
sentences were incoherent or the style confused, so long 
as the picture itself stood out boldly from the canvas. 
What cared he for " style " 1 He owns himself that he 
never regarded his manner of expression, so long as he 
could explain his meaning. 

" I was never a student of the Academy. I have not been 
able to cure myself of the fault of writing rapicll}^ To make 
my style more exact and agreeable by correcting it, would be 
to recast the whole work, and this labour would pass my 
strength, and would run the risk of being unpleasing (ivyrat). 
To correct well what one. has written, one must know how 
to write well. It will be easily seen that I have no right to 
pique myself on that quality. I have thought of nothing all 
along except exactitude and truth." 

For thirty years, as has been said. Saint Simon 
continued to write daily his impressions of men and 
events as they passed before him, and then, when he 
finally left the Court in 1723, he carried with him this 
enormous mass of notes and memoranda and treatises 
and essays ; and these were the rough materials of his 
Memoirs, as well as of the notes and illustrations copied 
by him into the blank pages of Dangeau's journal. For 
thirteen years he continued this work of revision and selec- 
tion. Then, lastly, in 1740, he began to make a fair co]Dy 
of the whole, — transcribing them carefully in a small clear 
hand, with many abbreviations, but few corrections. 
Even thus written closely, they filled three thousand 
folio sheets. Following the example of Buffon and 



20 SAINT SIMON. 

Bossuet, he divided them into neither volumes nor 
chapters, but added a marginal summary, and a classi- 
fied index of subjects. 

Thus the Memoirs were really the one engrossing occu- 
pation of his lifetime, — not of the few years preceding 
his death. 

Saint Simon, with all his talents, was the worst 
possible man of business ("I scarcely know the four 
simple rules of arithmetic," he told the Regent, when 
he wanted to make him Minister of Finance), and he 
died heavily in debt. By his will he left his manu- 
scripts to his cousin, the Bishop of Metz, as being a 
man of prudence and discretion, and an exact inventory 
was made of them accordingly. But the creditors 
claimed them, and a lawsuit took place between them 
and the hehs of the estate, to decide the right of pos- 
session, — the latter wanting to keep them as heirlooms, 
and the former to realise something by their sale. It 
ended, however, in a higher authority intervenmg ; 
and all these precious documents, after having been 
left six years in charge of M. Delaleu, a notary, were 
impounded and carried off to the Foreign Office "by 
order of the king." So far this was an advantage, as 
it prevented their being dispersed or sold : in fact, M. 
Baschet thinks their seizure may have been the result of 
a secret agreement between Saint Simon's family and the 
Duke de Choiseul, the Foreign Minister. 

It was evidently known from the first, that among 
these numerous manuscript volumes (about 280 in all), 
these famous Memohs might be found ; for, shortly after 
they had been locked up in the Foreign Office, we 
find the Abbe de Yoisenon commissioned to read them 



THE MEMOIRS. 2l 

and extract some of the more piquant anecdotes to 
amuse Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour ; and 
Madame du Deffand wrote in 1771 to Horace Walpole 
that she had just read them " with inexpressible delight," 
and promised to send them to him by the hands of a 
certain Abbe. But they underwent " a strange adven- 
ture " on their way from Chanteloup, and never reached 
Strawberry Hill. Though still kept " prisoners of state," 
it seems that they were lent from time to time to certain 
privileged persons, and copies, all more or less incorrect, 
made from the more interesting portions. Voltaire had 
seen them, and intended to refute them. Duclos used 
them for his ' Secret History of Louis XIV.,' and Mar- 
montel (and Anquetil after him) made large extracts 
from them. 

In 1780 a volume was published at Brussels, pur- 
porting to be extracts from the journal of a celebrated 
duke and man of letters, " better known by the excess 
of his frankness than by that of his credulity." Then 
appeared ' A Gallery of the Ancient Court ; ' and at 
last, in 1788, Saint Simon's name was boldly placed on 
the title-page of some extracts from the Memoirs, bor- 
rowed or stolen by one Soulavie, who seems to have 
been as impudent and as unscrupulous an impostor as 
La Beaumelle. But all this time the precious Memoirs 
themselves remained with the rest of the manuscripts in 
the ^Foreign Office, and it was not till 1819 that the head 
of the family (a General Saint Simon) obtained leave 
from Louis XVIII. to have his ancestor's journals handed 
over to him. In 1830 the first authentic and complete 
edition was published, and it was at the meeting of 
the Sorbonne in the same year that Villemain pronounced 



22 SAINT SIMON. 

his well-known panegyric on the writer. We are told 
the effect produced on the literary world at Paris hy 
their publication was prodigious, and Sainte Beuve can 
only compare it to that caused by the Waverley ^Kovels. 
It was, he says, as if a curtain had suddenly been lifted 
from the past century, and had let in a flood of light 
upon every corner of Versailles as it might be seen in 
the days of the Great King. 

The Memoirs, as we have them now in M. Cheruel's 
edition, leave nothiug to be desired in the way of com- 
pleteness and correctness, but they are not a tenth part 
of what Saint Simon actually wrote and left behind 
him. There are still to be found, buried somewhere 
in the catacombs of the Foreign Office on the Quay 
d'Orsay, no less than two hundred and sixty-six port- 
folios or volumes filled with notes, letters, treatises, and 
memoranda, all in Saint Simon's handwriting. All these 
documents had been kept together until M. Dumont 
classified and rearranged the archives of the Foreign 
Office in 1848. Where they are now, no one seems 
exactly to know. They appear to be regarded in the 
light of an "Eleusinian mystery," about which it is a 
sacrilege even to inquire ; and the questions asked from 
time to time by some inquisitive man of letters are not 
only not answered, but produce "an emotion" in the 
official mind. When' Guizot was Foreign Minister, an 
attempt was made towards publishing some of the State 
papers of the Monarchy, and we have the result in Mig- 
net's work on the 'Spanish Succession.' Had he only 
added to this the publication of Saint Simon's ' Paquet 
d'Espagne,' some further new and curious light might 



THE MEMOIRS. 23 

have been thrown on the tangled web of diplomacy 
which preceded the great war. 

It is impossible even to conjecture what is or what is 
not contained in this mass of unpublished manuscripts. 
Lemontey says that among them is an " immense and 
varied correspondence" — nearly nine hundred letters — 
probably the original of every letter Saint Simon re- 
ceived, and the copy of every letter he wrote. These 
would no doubt explain much that is obscure and m- 
consistent in the Memoirs. They might rectify his 
injustices; they might give reasons for his unaccount- 
able prejudices ; they might possibly reveal a kind- 
liness and good -nature imsuspected at present; they 
might give us the genial and domestic side of his char- 
acter. In short, until his letters are published, we can- 
not be said to know Saint Simon. ^ Whether they will 
ever be published or not depends on the liberality or 
caprice of the French Foreign Office ; but so many 
literary men have so often vainly tried even to get a 
sight of these famous manuscripts, that not much hope 
of success is given for the future. The worst fear is that 
their publication may be delayed until it is too late, — 
that some accidental fire, or some fresh outburst of Com- 
munism, may destroy these priceless manuscripts, and 
that they may be as irrecoverably lost to posterity as 
the missing decades of Livy or the greater part of the 
orations of Lysias.^ 

1 "Un Saint Simon epistolaire et prime-sautier est tout entier a 
reveler." — Baschet. 

2 It appears that the permission, so long sought for, has at last 
been given (March 1880), — thanks to M. de Frej'cinet, Minister for 
Foreign Affairs, — and that M. de Beilisle is preparing- a new edition 
of the Memoirs, while M. Drumont is studying the documents con- 
nected with Saint Simon's embassy to Spain in 1721. 



24 



CHAPTEE II. 

SAINT Simon's family. 

La Ferte Yidame, Saint Simon's family seat, where 
the Eoiivroys had lived from time immemorial, was a 
feudal chateau, built in a square, and guarded by a moat 
and embattled walls. Of the chateau itself not a stone 
remains. JS'ot many years after Saint Simon's death it 
was bought by the great capitalist Jean Joseph Laborde, 
who, with all his good qualities, had certainly no anti- 
quarian tastes, for he destroyed the old chateau with its 
traditions and associations, and built in its stead a house 
in a more modern style. But though the chateau itself 
has disappeared, such an exact inventory of its contents 
has been left among Saint Simon's papers, that we 
know every picture and piece of tapestry in each room ; 
the chairs covered with brocaded silk; the curtains of 
green taffetas with gold fringe ; the library of six thou- 
sand volumes ; and even the writing- table " of cherry- 
wood, covered with stamped morocco," on which the 
famous Memoirs were written, and the "bureau with 
seven drawers," where they were probably kept under 
lock and key. 

Claude Saint Simon, father of the Memoir- writer, had 



SAINT SIMON S FAMILY. 25 

"been a page in tlie Court of Louis XIII., and owed his 
fortune to a lucky accident. The king, like all the 
Bourbons, was passionately fond of hunting, and it was 
part of Claude Saint Simon's duties to bring him his 
second horse ; and his ingenuity in enabling his Majesty 
to change horses without dismounting was his first intro- 
duction to the royal favour. Once started at Court, the 
little page of the stables rose by rapid steps. He became 
Chief Squire, First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Grand 
"Wolf-hunter, Knight of the Order of the Holy Ghost, 
Captain of the Palace- Guard at Saint Germains, and 
Governor of the Castle of Blaye. Throughout his de- 
scription Saint Simon paints his father as the Last of 
the Barons — " one in whom some spark of the feudal 
spirit still burned " — the hero of a bygone age and " the 
devoted servant of the best and greatest of kings." "We 
are told that his sagacity and discretion made him many 
friends at Court, and even gained for him the confidence 
of the great Eichelieu himself. 

" When the shades of misfortune were gathering round 
this Minister," says Saint Simon, " my father was often sud- 
denly awoke at midnight by his bed-curtains being drawn 
aside by a valet with a candlestick in his hand, and tliere 
would be Richelieu standing behind him. And the cardinal 
would then take the candlestick and seat himself at the foot 
of the bed, crying out that he was lost, and had come to my 
father for advice and assistance, repeating some orders he 
had received, or some passage of arms that he had just had 
with the king." 

In fact, it was by Claude Saint Simon's help that 
Eichelieu, on the eve of his disgrace, had the long secret 
interview with Louis, and rehearsed the farce of his 



26 SAINT SIMON. 

pretended resignation, to be afterwards publicly per- 
formed on the celebrated " Day of Dupes." By Louis 
himself Saint Simon was both honoured and trusted, 
and all would have gone well with him (if we may believe 
his son) had he not mcurred the enmity of Chavigny, 
the Minister of War. On some affront, real or fancied, 
from this Minister, he threw up his office at Court, and 
retired to the Castle of Blaye. There he stayed some 
four years, still keeping up a correspondence with Louis, 
until summoned once more to Versailles on the occasion 
of the king's last illness. It was his duty at the funeral 
to throw the sword of state upon the coffin as it lay in 
the open vault, and, says Saint Simon, "he has often 
told me that, when he threw the sword, he was for the 
moment on the point of throwing himself after it." 

In that grave lay buried the hero and idol of the old 
duke's life ; and the memory of Louis XIII. was always 
kept sacred at the chateau of La Ferte. Saint Simon 
himself wore a ring with this king's miniature set in dia- 
monds on it"; there w^as a picture of him in every room 
both of his town and country houses ; there was a statue 
of him in the chapel, with a lamp kept constantly burning 
before it. 

" Never," says Saint Simon, " did my father console him- 
self for the death of Louis XIII. ; never did he speak of him 
without tears in his eyes ; never did he mention him except 
as the king his master ; never did he fail going to Saint Denis 
on his behalf, year after year, on the 14th of May, or to offer 
to his memory a solemn mass at Blaye when he found him- 
self there on that anniversary. It was a feeling of veneration, 
affectionate remembrance, even tenderness, that he expressed 
in words whenever he spoke of him ; and he gloried in dwell- 
ing upon his personal exploits and on his private virtues." 



SAINT SIMON S FAMILY. 27 

Saint Simon's account of tlie heroic part played by 
his father in the war of the Fronde has been called in 
question, with some reason. It is even said to be almost 
entirely pure romance ; but we must leave the responsi- 
bility of his statements with the writer. According to 
his account, nothing could be nobler or more independ- 
ent than the duke's conduct in those troubled times which 
followed Louis XIII. 's death. He resisted all the tempt- 
ing offers of Conde ; he refused the bribes of the King 
of Spain ; he was proof even against the charming elo- 
quence of the Duchess de Longueville ; he armed 500 
gentlemen at his own expense, and garrisoned Elaye in 
the name of the King of France; and when proposals 
came for a surrender of the place, he tln^eatened to tie a 
shot to the heels of the next messenger and throw him 
into the Gironde, — " for as long as he lived," he said, " he 
would never fail the child and widow of his old master." 
In gratitude Mazarin offered him the choice of a marshal's 
baton or the title of prince ; but the old duke, in his 
pride, would have neither the one nor the other. He 
would never, he declared, tarnish the honour of his 
family by allowing it to be supposed possible that his 
loyalty could be bought or sold. 

Some years after this, Claude Saint Simon happened 
one day to look into Eochefoucauld's Memoirs of his 
Time, and there found himself represented as having 
broken his word to Conde, and holding Blaye for the 
king, when he had agreed to surrender it to the Frondists. 

" My father felt so keenly the atrocity of this calumny that 
he seized a pen and wrote on the margin of the volume, ' The 
writer has told a lie.^ Not content with this, he then went 
and discovered the publisher (for the book was not sold 



28 SAINT SIMON. 

openly on its first appearance), and asked to see all the copies 
of the work, — prayed, promised, threatened, and was so per- 
sistent that he made the man show them. He at once took a 
pen and wrote in every copy the same marginal note as before. 
You may imagine the astonishment of the bookseller and the 
subsequent indignation of M. de Rochefoucauld. There was 
a great noise made in the matter, but nothing came of it." 

The old duke married again in 1670 — a charming wife 
— and soon afterwards there came a letter from Madamo 
de Montespan, offering to the new duchess what was then 
supposed a high mark of Court favour, the post of Lady- 
in- Waiting to the king's mistress. But the duke would 
not hear of it. " He opened the letter, and at once took 
a pen and politely declined the offer, adding, that ' at 
his age he had taken a wife, not for the Court, but for 
himself.' " 

The writer of the Memoirs was the child of the 
second marriage, being born in 1675; and he always 
speaks of his mother, on the few occasions when he 
mentions her name, in terms of affection and respect, 
although he does not think it necessary to go into her 
family history. " She was an Aubefine," — he says, very 
curtly ; and one is inclined to suspect that the Aube- 
fines had not much to boast of in the way of pedigree, and 
certainly could not be compared to his father's family, 
the Eouvroys, who traced their descent from Charlemagne. 
But though, after the first few chapters, the dow^ager- 
duchess disappears from the Memoirs, she seems to have 
indirectly exercised a strong influence over her son. 
Even when he was fifty years old, and a member of the 
Regent's Council, we find him still deferring to her 
authority, although the question was the marriage of his 



SAINT SIMON S FAMILY. 29 

^daughter. The rest of the family, including the young 
lady herself, were strongly opposed to the match ; yet 
he tells us, " My mother thought differently, and she 
was accustomed to decide." And the marriage took 
place as she wished. 

Among other pieces of good advice that his mother gave 
him during his boyhood was a warning that his future in 
life must depend on himself, for he had no near relatives 
and no friends at Court : he must not, therefore, rest idly 
on his oars, and must do something and be somebody ; 
and he says that she succeeded in inspiring him with 
a great ambition to rise by his own efforts. Meanwhile 
he was carefully educated, first by a Jesuit at home — a 
Father Sanadon, the only member of the Order of whom 
he speaks with anything like respect. Then he was sent 
to the Academy at Eochefort, where he studied science 
and philosophy. But he tells us that he had no taste 
for metaphysics : what delighted him most were the 
chronicles and memoirs of his own country, and it was 
their perusal that first gave him the idea of writing his 
OA\Ti. " My firm resolve to keep them entirely to myself 
appeared " (so he says) " to make up completely for the 
inconveniences that did not fail to occur to me." 



30 



CHAPTER III. 

SAINT SIMON IN THE AEMT. 

Approaching the mature age of seventeen, Saint Simon 
got tired of his books and lessons, and — excited by the 
example of his fellow-piipil, the young Duke of Chartres, 
then setting out for his first campaign — he induced his 
father to take him to Versailles and present him at 
Court. Louis received them both very graciously, and 
at once enrolled the young men in the regiment known 
as the " Grey Musketeers." The following year (1692), 
young Saint Simon set off to join the army in Flanders, 
with what would seem in these days an immense camp 
equipment for a cadet, — thirty-five horses or sumpter- 
mules, and two gentlemen in attendance, a tutor and a 
squire, charged by his mother with the special care of 
his person. I^either of these two guardians, however, 
seems to have been of much use to their young master. 
In the first action, the tutor lost his hat and wig, while 
his horse took the bit in his teeth and bolted with 
him into the enemy's lines; while the squire kept at 
a prudent distance from the firing, and only came up 
when it was all over, to congratulate people generally on 
the brilliant success of the day. " I was so surprised 



SAINT SIMON IN THE ARMY. 31 

and indignant at his effrontery," says Saint Simon, 
"that I never answered him a word then, and have 
never spoken to him since." 

This was one of the last campaigns in which Louis 
ever took the field in person. As usual, his Majesty 
was accompanied by an immense retinue, — marshals, 
princes of the blood, nobles with their equipages and 
attendants, and half the ladies of the Court, besides hosts 
of camp - followers, and endless trains of provisions, 
baggage-waggons, and artillery. A review was held in 
the plains near Mons, and 120,000 men were drawn up 
in two lines extending over eight miles of country. 
Then l!^amur, the strongest fortress in the Netherlands, 
was solemnly invested under the direction of Vauban, 
"the soul of sieges." Earthworks w^ere thrown up, 
trenches were opened ; parallels and escarpments were 
formed in a manner that would have delighted the heait 
of Corporal Trim ; and nil went well for the besiegei s 
till the 8th of June, the day of Saint Medard, wd.o 
answers to our Saint Swithin. On that day, unfortur- 
ately, a deluge of rain set in, and lasted without inter- 
mission for three weeks. The country became a quag- 
mire ; the roads were flooded, and the discomfort and 
difficulties caused were so great, that the soldiers, furious 
with the w^eather, broke and burnt every image of the 
unlucky Saint Medard that they could lay their hands 
on. Carts and waggons were useless for transport, owing 
to the mud, and everything required for the camp, from 
the gunpowder to the forage, had to be carried on the 
backs of mules and horses. The common troopers took 
their share of the fatigue-duty cheerfully enough ; but 
when it came to the turn of the fine gentlemen of the 



32 SAINT SIMON. 

king's guards to carry sacks of corn to Luxemburg's 
camp, they not only murmured loudly, but on one occa- 
sion threw down their sacks, and flatly refused to lift 
them on the horses. 

" I arrived with my detachment of musketeers just as the 
guards made their refusal, and I loaded my sack before 
their eyes. Marin (the cavalry brigadier, and a lieutenant 
of the body-guards) saw me at the same moment, and, full 
of wrath at the refusal he had just met with, cried out — 
at the same time i)ointing me out, and calling my name — 
that, since I did not find this duty beneath me, the troopers 
and guardsmen need not feel it any dishonour or humili- 
ation to follow my example. This reproof, joined to the 
severe air of Marin, had such an immediate effect, that 
instantly, without a word of reply, the guardsmen filled their 
sacks as quickly as possible." 

Saint Simon's spirited conduct was repeated to Louis, 
and he received in consequence, as he tells us, many flat- 
tering marks of royal favour during this wearisome 
siege, Xamur at last capitulated, and shortly afterwards 
the campaign itself came to an end; but the exultation 
of the French over the fall of the fortress was greatly 
damped by the news which had just come of the disas- 
trous sea-fight off Cape La Hogue. 

Saint Simon lost his father early in the following 
year (1693). "He died," he says, "almost before they 
had time to call out that he was ill, — there was no more 
oil in the lamp. I heard the sad news as I came back 
from the king's couclier. The night was given to the 
just sentiments of nature, and early the next morning I 
went to find Bontems " (the king's valet) — to secure his 
influence in procuring some of the offices held by his 
father. 



SAINT SIMON IN THE ARMY. 33 

The whole strength of the kingdom was now put forth, 
and five large armies took the field at once. Louis again 
assumed the command in person, and joined his forces 
with those of the Duke of Luxemburg on the Flemish 
frontier. The Prmce of Orange found himself hemmed 
in by two armies, each of them superior to his own, and 
cut off from all supplies and reinforcements. As he said 
afterwards in a letter to a friend, he was caught in a 
trap, and nothing but a miracle could have saved him. 

But suddenly, when Luxemburg was congratulating 
himself on this rare opportunity, Louis declared his in- 
tention of sending his own army off to the German 
frontier, and returning himself to Versailles. It was in 
vain that the Duke went on his knees and implored 
him with tears in his eyes to seize this chance of anni- 
hilating his enemy. Louis persisted in his resolution, and 
marched off the next day to join the ladies. His soldiers 
murmured openly ; and the officers, high and low, could 
not conceal their disgust and disappointment at leaving 
such a promising campaign without drawing their swords. 

" I chanced," says Saint Simon, " to be going alone on 
duty to M. de Luxemburg's headquarters, as I often used 
to do, merely to see what was going on, and what was likely 
to be the programme the next day. I was greatly surprised 
not to find a soul there, and to hear that every one was on the 
king's side of the camp. I was sitting there pensive and 
stock-still upon my horse, wondering what on earth this 
could mean, and debating whether I should return or push 
on to the king's army, when I saw the Prince de Conti coming 
from our camp, followed only by a page and a groom with a 
spare horse. ' What are you doing there ? ' he cried out as he 
joined me, laughing at my surprise ; and he explained that he 
was just going to wish the king good-bye, and that I had bet- 

F.c. — X. C 



34 SAINT SIMON. 

ter go with him to do the same. ' What do you mean by 
wishing good-bye ? ' I asked. Then he ordered his page and 
his groom to follow him at a little distance, and asked me 
to tell my lackey to do the same. And then he told me 
all about the retreat of the king, dying with laughter, and 
made tremendous fun of it all — for he completely trusted 
me, in spite of my youth. I listened with all my ears, and 
my inexpressible astonishment stopped my asking any ques- 
tions. Chatting together in this manner, we met all the 
world on their way back, and we joined them." 

The next day Louis set off for Namur, where the ladies 
were waiting for him, and from ]^amur returned to Ver- 
sailles. Left to himself, Luxemburg at once marched 
after the Prince of Orange, and found him encamped in 
a strong position near Neerwinden. 

Saint Simon gives us a graphic, though confused, 
account of this battle — next to Malplaquet and Water- 
loo, the bloodiest ever fought in that part of Europe. It 
was the only action he was ever engaged in, and he tells 
us with pardonable vanity how his own regiment charged 
five times ; how his colonel and brigadier were killed ; 
£ind hiow a gold button was shot away from his own 
doublet. He has left us a description of the hero of the 
day — the Duke of Luxemburg — who was, if Marlborough 
be excepted, the greatest captain of the century : — 

" Nothing could be more exact than the coup dJodil of 
M. de Luxemburg ; nothing could be more brilliant, more 
carefully planned, more far-sighted than he showed himself 
in presence of the enemy, or on a day of battle, coupled 
with an audacity, a playfulness, and a sang froid that 
allowed him to see everything, and to foresee everything in 
the midst of the hottest fire, and of the most imminent 
danger. It was there that he was really great. For the 
rest he was idleness itself. He rarely walked, unless there 



LUXEMBURG LAWSUIT. 35 

was some great necessity ; gambling, conversation with his 
intimate friends, and every evening a supper with a very 
small number (nearly always the same); and if he was 
encamped near any town, care was taken that the fair sex 
should be agreeably mingled with the other guests. At such 
times Luxemburg was inaccessible to all the world, and if 
any emergency occurred, it was Puysegur (the second in 
command) who gave the orders. Such was the life of this 
great general when with the army, and such it was also 
at Paris, when the Court and the great world occupied his 
days and pleasure his evenings." 

Saint Simon occupied the interval between his two 
campaigns characteristically enough — in bringing a law- 
suit against the great Marshal whom he has just de- 
scribed. It is quite clear that the details of this ques- 
tion of precedence, which would in modern days have 
been decided by the Heralds' College or by the Com- 
mittee of Privileges in half an hour, have a far greater 
interest and importance in his eye than all the battles 
ever fought. Luxemburg had claimed the dormant 
title of the Duke of Piney — a title dating from 1581 — 
which, if proved, would give him precedence over all 
the dukes except one on the roll of peers. To sub- 
stantiate this claim, he had (according to Saint Simon) 
ferreted out the daughter and heiress of the last Duke 
of Piney by his second wife, and married her, although 
she was "hideously ugly, like some frightfully fat 
fishwoman in her cask;" and then he had bribed the 
real heirs (the children of ih.Q first wife) — an imbecile 
priest and his sister who had taken the veil — to waive 
their claims to the title and estates. Lastly, he had 
got himself created Duke of Piney by new letters- 
patent, dating from 1662 



36 SAINT SIMON. 

All this was monstrous, according to Saint Simon. 
The ancient title was virtually extinct, or, if not extinct, 
should have descended to the imbecile priest shut up in 
St Lazare. And so he induced his brother peers to enter 
on their hopeless crusade against Luxemburg's claim; 
but, as he confesses himself, everything was against 
them from the first. Just then Luxemburg was the 
hero of the hour, fresh from a victorious campaign, the 
friend of royalty, and popular with all men of all classes 
— " in a word, the ladies, the rising generation, all the 
fashion of Court and town, were for him ; and no one on 
our side was strong enough to counterbalance the weight 
of these grandees, or even to make any head against 
their influence ; and if one adds to this the pains he took 
beforehand to cultivate the goodwill of the chief men 
both in Parliament and the Chamber of Peers by means 
of parents, friends, mistresses, confessors, valets, promises, 
services, it will be clear that with a Pirst President like 
Harlay at the head of this faction, we had a business on 
hand incomparably too strong for us." 

The case was argued and reargued before the Parlia- 
ment, and after various delays and postponements, during 
which Luxemburg himself died, and his son became the 
defendant, judgment was at last given in favour of the 
title dating from 1662, while the decision as to Luxem- 
burg's claim to the title of 1581 was indefinitely post- 
poned. Thus things were left pretty much as they were 
before. 

Saint Simon's indignation at this verdict is almost 
ludicrous. By his account, the peers would have won 
their suit, in spite of the formidable odds against them, 
had it not been for the villany of Harlay, the Pirst 



CHAEACTEE OF HAELAY. 37 

President (or, as we might say, the Lord Chancellor), 
who had sold his influence to the opposite party; and 
then, by way of revenge, he paints Harlay's character 
for us in the blackest colours. After doing unwilling 
justice to the President's knowledge of the law and 
his profound and varied learning, he speaks of his 
"Pharisaical austerity" and his craft as a politician, 
and then he concludes — 

" He was destitute of real honour, secretly depraved in 
morals, with only a show of honesty, without even human- 
ity, — in a word, a perfect hypocrite ; without a faith, without 
a law, without a God, and without a soul ; a cruel husband, 
a barbarous father, a tyrannical brother ; no one's friend but 
his own ; wicked by nature ; taking delight in insulting, out- 
raging, and crushing (others), and having never, during all 
his life, missed a chance of doing so.^ 



1 Saint Simon says, " It is a pity some one has not made a Harleiana 
of all his sayings, which would show the character of this cynic, and 
would be amusing at the same time," He has done his best to sup- 
ply this want himself ; and of the many stories he tells us of the 
caustic humour of the First President, the following is too good to be 
omitted. "The Duchess of La Ferte went to him [Harlay] to ask 
an audience, and, like every one else, had a taste of his temper. As 
she was leaving, she complained to her man of business, and called 
the First President ' an old baboon.' He was following her all the 
while, but did not say a word. At last she saw him behind her, but 
hoped that he had not overheard, and, without giving any sign of 
'having done so, he put her in her carriage. 

"■ Shortly afterwards her suit came on (before Harlay), and she unex- 
pectedly gained her cause. Oif she ran to the First President's house, 
and made him all kinds of acknowledgments. He— all humble and 
modest — made her a deep reverence, and then looking her straight in 
the face, — ' Madame,' said he in a loud voice before everybody, 'I am 
very glad that an old baboon {itn vieux singe) has been able to give 
some pleasure to an old she-monkey {^me veille guenon).' And then, 
in his humblest manner, without saying another word, he gave her 
his hand to conduct her to her carriage. The Duchess would have 
liked to have killed him or died herself." 



^ 



38 SAINT SIMON. 

" In appearance he was a small man, wiry and vigorous ; 
with, a lozenge-shaped face, a long aquiline nose, fine-speak- 
ing, piercing eyes that only looked at you askance, but which, 
if fixed on a client or a magistrate, were like to make him 
sink into the ground. He wore a robe that was somewhat 
short, collar and wristbands plaited like those of a priest's, a 
brown wig mixed with white, well stuffed but short, with a 
great cap above it. He stooped, and walked a little bent, 
with a studied air more humble than modest, and continually 
scraped along the walls to make people give way to him with 
greater noise ; and at Versailles made his way with respectful, 
and, as it were, shamefaced bows to the right and left." 

About this time Saint Simon married a daughter of 
the Marshal de Lorges, and to lier excellent qualities of 
head as well as heart he owed, he says, the chief happi- 
ness of his life. He describes her as being "fair, with 
a perfect complexion and figure, and with a bearing at 
once extremely noble and modest, and with a something 
I know not what of majesty, tempered with an air of 
virtue and natural sweetness." ^ The wedding was cele- 
brated in the Church of St Roch, and the curious may 
still see in the parish register the signatures of the 
bride and bridegroom, — Saint Simon's in a bold, large 
hand, very unlike his usual small, neat writing ; and the 
bride's in a school-girl's copperplate style. There was a 
grand banquet after the ceremony, a levee the next 
morning, and in the evening they were invited to 

^ The ' Mercurie Galant ' — the ' Morning Post ' of that day — does 
justice to the bride's personal appearance, and adds that she had " a 
beauty of soul, such as a person of quality ought to have, that will 
make her a fitting match for her husband the duke — one of the 
wisest and most accomplished seigneurs of the Court." It is not 
often that Saint Simon gets such high compliments from contemp,o- 
rary journals. 



CAMPAIGN ON THE RHINE. 39 

supper at Versailles, where Louis received the young 
duchess in his most gracious and stately manner. )X 

For obvious reasons Saint Simon did not choose to 
serve again under Luxemburg. Accordingly he changed 
his regiment and joined the army of the Rhine under his 
father-in-law, the Marshal de Lorges. But he tells us 
very little about this campaign, beyond the Marshal's 
dangerous illness, when Saint Simon saved the old 
man's life by administering "a hundred and thirty 
English drops," which, we are told, had " an astonishing 
effect." In Flanders, he says that a large part of the 
Prince of Orange's army under Yaudemont might have 
been easily surrounded and cut off, had it not been for 
the cowardice of the Duke of Maine, the king's favourite 
son. Message after message was sent him from head- 
quarters, urging him to attack the enemy; but he 
"stammered out excuses," and allowed Yaudemont's 
force to make good their retreat.^ " All our army were 
in despair," Saint Simon adds, "and both officers and 
men made no scruple of expressing their indignation and 
contempt." 

It was some time before the king heard of his son's 
poltroonery, for Yilleroy was far too good a courtier to tell 
all he knew in his despatches, and his subordinates held 
their tongues. At last Louis suspected something of the 
real state of the case, and cross-questioned Lavienne, one 

1 Here, again, we are told that Saint Simon has been led away 
by his hatred of "the Bastard." Two eyewitnesses of what oc- 
curred — Berwick and Saint Hilaii-e — give an entirely dififerent ver? 
sion of the story, and attribute the delay 14 the attack to Marshal 
Villeroy, and not to the Duke of Maine— rfsee Ch|gruel, p. 625). 
Macaulay accepts Saint Simon's account (as he usually does) with- 
out scruplp or question— (History, iv. 587). 



40 SAINT SIMON. 

of his valets, who reluctantly told him the whole story. 
Louis's anger and mortification were extreme. 

" This prince, outwardly so calm and such a master of his 
slightest movements, even when events touched him most 
nearly, succumbed on this single occasion. As he was 
leaving the table at Marly with all the ladies, and in the 
presence of all the courtiers, he saw a servant who, while 
clearing away the dessert, put a biscuit in his pocket. In an 
instant the king forgets all his dignity, and with a cane in 
his hand which they had just brought him with his hat, he 
rushes upon the valet, who was not in the least expecting 
such an attack, strikes him, abuses him, and breaks the cane 
upon his shoulders (as a matter of fact it was only of rose- 
wood, and did not resist in the least). And then, with the 
handle in his hand, and with the air of a man who cannot 
contain himself, and all the time abusing this valet, who 
was by this time a long way off, he crossed the smaller salon 
and an antechamber, and entered Madame de Maintenon's 
room, where he remained nearly an hour, as he often did at 
Marly after dinner. As he was leaving her room to pass to 
his own, he saw Pere la Chaise, and as soon as he perceived 
him among the crowd of courtiers — 'My father,' he said in 
a loud voice, ' I have just beaten a rascal and have broken 
my cane on his back, but I do not believe that I have 
offended God' — and then he told the story of the pretended 
offence. All who were present trembled still more at what 
they had just seen and heard." 

After the Peace of Eyswick, Saint Simon's own 
regiment was disbanded with many others ; and about 
the same time thirty - eight brigadiers of cavalry were 
gazetted at once, but he looked in vain for his own 
name among the list. Five younger officers, who had 
probably paid a large sum for their promotion, were 
placed over his head, and in disgust he threw up his 



RETIRES FROM THE ARMY. 41 

commission — acting, he tells us, by the advice of some 
of his older friends. He wrote a civil letter to the 
king, making ill-health the excuse for having left the 
service. But Louis was annoyed, as he always was when 
any oiSicer sent in his resignation. " See, Monsieur, 
here is another man who is leaving us," he remarked to 
the Secretary of War, on reading Saint Simon's letter ; 
and it was long, we are told, before he forgot or forgave 
what he regarded as a personal slight. For years Saint 
Simon received no invitations to Marly — and there was 
no surer sign of royal disfavour. 



42 



CHAPTEE IV. 



VERSAILLES. 



Saint Simon does unwilling justice — if indeed he can "be 
said to do justice at all — to Louis XIV. 's character. He 
tells us that " he had received from God ability enough 
to be a good king, and possibly a sufficiently great king,"^ 
but that he had been corrupted by " the mortal poison of 
flattery;" that he was supremely vain and selfish; that 
his education had been neglected ; that history, law, and 
science were sealed books to him ; and that he disliked 
and discouraged anything like superior talent in others. 

Socially (even by Saint Simon's account), Louis was 
the first gentleman of his day — a king among men. 
Every accomplishment seemed to come naturally to him. 
He was a good dancer, a skilful tennis-player, a bold 
rider, and a first-rate marksman. 

" His figure, his carriage, the grace, the beauty, and the 
grand bearing which exceeded the beauty, even to the sound 
of his voice and mode of speaking, and the natural and ma- 
jestic grace of his whole person, made him as remarkable, 
even up to the day of his death, as the queen bee of the hive 



1 Mazarin, who knew Loxiis XIV, better than Saint Simon did, de- 
clared that " he had stuff enough in him to make four kings and an 
honest man." 



VERSAILLES. 43 

(le roi des aheilles) ; and if he had only been born an ordinary 
person, he would have equally had the talent for fetes, for 
pleasures, for gallantry, and for the distractions of love. 

" Never did any one give with a better grace, and thereby 
enhance so largely the value of his gifts. Never did any one 
give such distinction to his words, his smiles — nay, to his 
very looks. He made everything precious by making it 
choice and majestic, and to this the rarity and brevity of his 
words added not a little. If he addressed any one, — a ques- 
tion it might be, or some commonplace remark, — all the by- 
standers noticed the favoured individual : it was an honour 
about which one talked, and which always became a sort of 
consideration. It was the same with all his attentions and 
distinctions, and with the preferences so exactly proportioned 
to each person's merits. Never did he so far forget himself 
as to say anything disobliging of anybody ; and if he had 
to find fault, to reprimand, or to correct (which was seldom 
the case), it was always with an air of kindness, rarely with 
harshness or severity, and never with anger." 

Louis wished that Versailles should absorb the no- 
bility of France. AU the great nobles held offices in 
the household, which made their constant presence neces- 
sary; and a tovm had grown up around the palace, where 
each of them had his separate establishment. To such 
men the country was regarded as a desert, to which 
no one would be banished if he could help it. Thus, 
while between Paris and Versailles there was an endless 
stream of coaches and carriages passing and repassing, 
along the highroad between Paris and Orleans the trav- 
eller would meet nothing but a few peasants' carts, some 
soldiers on the march, or a messenger posting towards 
the frontier. "All Prance was there," is a common 
expression of Saint Simon's, in referring to some Court 
ceremonial ; and assuredly all the life and splendour of 



44 SAINT SIMON. 

the time was to be found at Versailles. At every levee 
the king looked right and left of him, with a glance that 
nothing could escape, and showed marked disapprobation 
of those who did not present themselves regularly. If a 
favour was asked for any of these absentees, — " Who is 
he % " was the reply. " I don't know him. He is a man 
I never see." His memory in these cases was never at 
fault. He would recognise, says Saint Simon, some 
ordinary person whom he had perhaps only seen once, 
after the lapse of twenty years, and would not only 
remember his face, but the circumstances of their last 
interview. 

Saint Simon could no more have lived away from 
Versailles than a man in modern society could be away 
from London in the season; and though, as has been 
said, he had too much temper, and too much honour, to 
play the courtier himself,^ Court life had special and irre- 
sistible attractions for him. Versailles was, so to speak, 
his hunting-ground, — the arena where he watched with 
insatiable curiosity the great human drama with all its 
varying scenes — the plots and counterplots — the in- 
trigues and ambitions — the rise and fall of courtier after 
courtier — the passions and vanities of this little world, 
and all its medley of tragedy and farce. The study of 
character seems to have had an ever-increasing fascination 
for him, and to have consoled him in a measure for his 
own isolation among the brilliant throng of nobles and 
princes, most of whom he so cordially hated and de- 
spised. These " insects of the Court," as he disdain- 

1 It was of Antin that the Regent Orleans said, " Voila comme un 
vrai courtier devoit etre — sans humeur et sans honneur." If we re- 
verse the proposition, it will exactly apply to Saint Simon. 



COURT LIFE. 45 

fully terms them, had a scientific value in his eyes, for 
they could be analysed and dissected by the man who 
could read their hearts ; their vices and their virtues 
could be weighed in the balance ; and every word and 
gesture could be scrutinised and referred to its origin- 
ating motive. Accordingly it was in the moments of 
some supreme agony or crisis, when the most practised 
actor was forced to drop his mask for the time bemg 
and show himself for once in his real character, that 
Saint Simon's powers of observation were excited to 
their keenest point, and he then became all eyes and 
ears to mark and note the scene as it passed before him. 

" It must be confessed," he says, " that for him who knows 
the Court to its inmost corners, the first sight of rare spec- 
tacles of this kind,^ so interesting in so man}'^ different points 
of view, gives an extreme satisfaction. Each face recalls to 
you the cares, the intrigues, the intense labour employed in 
the advancement and formation of fortunes by the aid of 
cabals ; the skill used to hold one's own ground and get rid 
of others ; the means of all kinds employed to that end ; the 
intimacies more or less advanced ; the estrangements, the 
coldnesses, the hatreds, the ill turns, the intrigues, the over- 
tures, the diplomacy, the meanness, the baseness of each; 
the disconcertment of some when half-way on their road, or 
in the midst, or at the height of their expectations ; . . . 
all this medley of living objects and of such important details 
give to him who knows how to receive it a pleasure which, 
hollow as it may seem, is one of the greatest that you can 
enjoy at Court." 

It may perhaps help to explain the ideas and associa- 
tions which Saint Simon attaches to this hateful word 
" courtier," if we take the character selected by himself, 

1 He is speaking of the famous scene at Versailles after Monseig- 
neur's death — see v. 152. 



46 SAINT SIMON. 

and "by Sainte Eeuve after him, as their type of the 
courtier par excellence. This was Antin, the only legiti- 
mate son of Madame de Montespan, and the half-brother 
of the Dukes of Maine and Toulouse. It is clear, even 
by Saint Simon's account, that Antin had been singularly 
gifted with almost every mental and bodily accomplish- 
ment that a man can need to hold his own in society, — a 
fine presence, charming manners, talent, learning, know- 
ledge of the world, powers of conversation, wit and hu- 
mour ; and, above all, he had what is perhaps the rarest 
of all social virtues — " never did he chance to speak ill 
of any one." But Saint Simon would have us believe 
that Antin, with all his fascinating qualities, was "an 
impudent Gascon," — base, false, and avaricious — a gam- 
bler, a cheat, and, above all, a coward. He had turned 
his back in the day of battle, and had accepted the gross- 
est insults without venturing to retaliate, and that at a 
time when courage was the first instinct of a nobleman, 
and when cowardice was a brand on a man's character 
that nothing could efface. " It was looked upon as dis- 
graceful," says Saint Simon, " to insult Antin," — ^just as 
it would be now to strike a woman. 

Still, in spite of his shortcomings, there can be no 
doubt that Antin was the most popular man of the day. 
He had contrived to make himself so useful and agree- 
able to all parties at Court that he was equally at home 
both at Meudon and Yersailles. The king liked his 
lively conversation and his knowledge of life and char- 
acter ; and Monseigneur always found him good com- 
pany, and ready to gamble from night till morning. As 
an instance of the trouble he took to ingratiate himself 
with Madame de Maintenon, Saint Simon tells us that, 



ANTIN. 47 

when she visited him at Petit Bourg, she found her bou- 
dou* arranged as an exact duplicate of her own room at 
Versailles — the same decorations, the same pictiu-es, the 
same flowers, and even the same books, lying open in 
the same place. But even this delicate attention did not 
mollify the great lady, for she went out of her way to 
sneer at his complaisance before she left Petit Bourg. 
Louis was more easily pleased, and admired all he saw. 

" Everything was highly approved of, except an avenue of 
chestnut-trees, which, though they looked marvellously well 
from the gardens, blocked up the view from the window of 
the king's room. Antin said not a word ; but when the king 
awoke the next morning, and looked out of his window, he 
saw the most charming view in the world, and no avenue in 
sight, and no trace of there having been one in the place 
where he had seen it the night before. Nor were there any 
traces of workmen nor of removal along the whole length of 
the line, nor in any part of the gardens near it. It was as if 
the avenue had never existed. No one had heard any noise 
or disturbance in the night ; the trees had disappeared, and 
the earth was so completely levelled that it seemed as if the 
transformation must have been produced by the wand of 
5ome beneficent fairy in this enchanted castle." 

We have selected Antm as being the type of his class, 
but Saint Simon would tell us that there were a thou- 
sand like him, or even worse than him, incessantly hang- 
ing about the Court ; and it was the sight of such men 
daily receiving honours and rewards, and all the good 
things of this life, that rankled so deeply in his mind. 
Added to this was the sense of his own unrequited mer- 
its, and of his powerlessness to remedy the evil and im 
justice of the case. These feelings explain, and in some 
degree excuse, the bitter and uncharitable tone of many 



48 SAINT SIMON. 

of his portraits. Christian as he was, he could not he 
at charity with men whom he believed to he hypocrites 
and rascals. " One is charmed," he says, " with true 
and honest men ; one is irritated against the scoundrels 
who swarm at Court, still more against those who have 
done us an injury. The Stoic is a fine and noble chi- 
mera. I don't pique myself on impartiality, and I should 
vainly try to do so." In fact, it was a point of conscience 
with him, if he described such men as Antin at all, to 
describe them as he saw them, not as they appeared to 
their ignorant and foolish admirers, — to strip ofi' the 
mask that concealed their features, and lay bare every 
secret corner of their hearts ; to paint them in their true 
colours, not to gloss over their foibles and their vices ; 
to paint them (if we may borrow Macaulay's illustra- 
tion), as Lely painted Cromwell, with all his warts and 
wrinkles, or as Eembrandt painted his burgomaster, 
with every line and shadow traced by time upon his 
face, — and not to give us a gallery of portraits insipid 
and unreal, and unlike the actual men. 

There is no doubt that, in many instances. Saint 
Simon has over-coloured these portraits : indeed we may 
trust, for the credit of humanity, that the courtiers of 
his day were not quite the angels of darkness that he 
represents them, and that there was more honour and 
honesty to be found among them than he is willing 
to allow. But just as Carlyle discovered " shams " in 
almost every phase of modern life, and as Thackeray 
invented " snobs " to fill up his forty chapters, — so 
Saint Simon has made the most of his grand topic for 
reproof and scorn and denunciation, and has selected 
" the courtier " as his text for a hundred sermons. 



THE KING S DAILY LIFE. 49 

There are two famous chapters in La Bruyere, where 
he describes the Court and fashion of the day much in 
the same bitter and satirical spirit. Like our writer, 
La Bruyere maintains that the courtier's name is legion 
— an inexhaustible species, embracing all kinds and 
degrees of gilded servitude, from " the satellites of 
Jupiter," the most favoured personal friends of royalty, 
to the humbler but not less ambitious parasites, who 
hang about the anterooms and galleries on the chance 
of a passing look or smile from their patrons. 

In fact, the courtier's life at Versailles was a faint re- 
flection of the king's. From the moment that he opened 
his eyes in the morning till he closed them at night, Louis 
was always (so to speak) on parade — in full-dress order. 
He could not even take his medicine or eat his broth if 
he was ill, without an usher first summoning the grande 
entree ; and every detail of his ordinary life was regu- 
lated, as Saint Simon tells us, by the most tedious eti- 
quette. Even his levee was a long and stately ceremony 
— a kind of drama in five acts ; and his toilet took 
place in the presence of a large audience, when one 
favoured courtier would hold the candlestick, another 
would take the towel after his Majesty had washed 
his hands, while to hand the shirt was a privilege 
reserved for a prince of the blood -royal. Then came 
private audiences ; and shortly afterwards the captain of 
the guard threw 0]3en the folding doors of the cabinet, 
and Louis walked along the gallery that led to the 
chapel, bowing right and left to the line of courtiers as 
he passed them. 

Mass was then celebrated, and the courtiers gazed with 
all their eyes on the king as he remained on his knees 

P.O. — ^X. D 



50 SAINT SIMON. 

before the altar. "One cannot help seeing a sort of 
subordination in their worship," says La Bruyere, " for 
the people seem to adore the prince, and the prince to 
adore God." 

When Mass was over the king returned to his private 
room, and his Ministers followed him with their port- 
folios j and on four mornings of the week he held a 
cabinet council — latterly always in Madame de Mainte- 
non's room. Dinner was served at one o'clock. Except 
when he was with the army, no man under the rank of 
a prince of the blood ever dined with the kuig : the 
courtiers remained standing behind his chair ; and even 
his brother, " Monsieur," was only occasionally honoured 
with a seat at the same table. The king had a royal 
appetite, and his dinner always consisted of several rich 
soups and four or five courses of meat, concluding with 
dessert, ices, and sweetmeats.^ " If he made me eat half 
as much as he eats himself, I should not be long 
alive," wrote Madame de Maintenon in 1713. 

When dmner was over, the king entered his cabinet 
again, fed his dogs, changed his dress (again in public), 
and then went down by the private stairs to the marble 
court, where his coach was waiting. Sometimes, instead 
of driving, he would go out hunting, though he gave this 
up latterly, or shoot in the park, or drive a four-in-hand 
through the forest of Fontainebleau ; and we are told 
that no professional coachman ever handled the reins 
with such skill and grace. As he grew older, his exercise 

1 "I have often," writes Madame de Bavifere, " seen the king eat 
four plates of different soups, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a large 
plate of salad, two good slices of ham, a plate of pastry, and then be 
helped more than once to fruit and sweetmeats." 



COURT LIFE. 51 

generally took the form of a promenade round the gar- 
dens, where he would feed the carjD, watch the fountams 
playing, and chat Avith his gardener, Le Notre ; and 
often for four or five hours his courtiers had to follow his 
Majesty in all weathers up and down the long terraces, 
with their heads only sheltered by their periwigs ; but, 
as the Abbe de Polignac once said, when Louis hoped 
that his purple dress would not be spoiled by a sudden 
shower — " It is nothing, Sire ; the rain of Marly never 
wets one." It was only at Marly that the king ever gave 
the welcome order, " Your hats, gentlemen," when they 
all covered. 

Sometimes, instead of the stately promenade, there 
would be a picnic {fete chamj^etre)^ or a garden-party, 
when tents were pitched under the trees of Saint Ger- 
mains, or in one of the long alleys at Fontainebleau ; 
or the courtiers rowed in gondolas along the broad canal 
at Versailles, and did not return till after sunset. 

At Marly the ladies of the Court always had supper at 
the royal table ; but here again everything was regulated 
by the strictest etiquette. One evening Madame de 
Torcy (the Minister's wife) happened to come in late, 
and took a seat that was vacant above the Duchess de 
Duvas. Louis almost petrified her with a look of anger 
and astonishment, and complamed to Madame de Main- 
tenon afterwards that he had never seen such " incredible 
insolence on the part of a little Tjourgeoise.''^ He con- 
stantly reverted to the subject, and did not — so Saint 
Simon says — recover his equanimity for three whole days. 

After supper the long gallery and the whole of that 
magnificent suite of rooms were lighted up with count- 
less chandeliers, and the splendour of the scene can only 



52 SAINT SIMON. 

be faintly realised from the pictures left to us of the 
time — the laced ruffles, the silken coats, and gold em- 
broidery worn by the courtiers, and the ladies' dresses 
sparkling (as a writer describes them) like a rich espalier 
of pearls, gold, jewels, flowers, and fruits. Sometimes 
there would be a fancy ball or a masquerade, when the 
maids of honour represented the seasons of the year, or 
some scene from mythology ; or a fair, where the ladies 
kept stalls and sold curiosities from China and Japan ; 
or a lottery, where Louis distributed jewels and trinkets 
to the winners of lucky numbers. In 1700 there was a 
ball every night for three weeks ; and Saint Simon says, 
" One did not leave till eight o'clock in the morning. I 
was heartily glad when Lent came, and remained almost 
dead with fatigue for two or three days, and Madame de 
Saint Simon could hardly get over Shrove-Tuesday." 

As to the games of chance played on ordinary even- 
ings, their names are as numerous as those played by 
Gargantua himself. Lansquenet, piquet, ombre, brelan, 
basset, are a few out of the many mentioned ; and in 
Saint Simon's own country-house (as we learn by the 
inventory of the furniture) there were six tables devoted 
to different games in one room. Some cool-headed 
players like Dangeau, who combined luck with skill, 
would win a hundred thousand francs at basset in ten 
days. Others, like Antin, were supposed to aid fortune 
by occasional cheating. 

" ' Pray, Monseigneur,' asked the king one day of his son, 
* is it true that while you were playing and gaining heavily, 
you gave your hat to Antin to hold while you threw your 
winnings into it, and that as you turned your head by 
chance, you surprised Antin pocketing the money 1 ' Mon- 



COURT LIFE. 53 

seigneur said nothing in reply, but only looked at the king 
and bowed his head to signify that it was even as he had 
said. ' I understand you, Monseigneur,' said the king. 
' I ask nothing more about it.' And thereupon they sepa- 
rated." 1 

Certainly some of the stories told us by Saint Simon 
reveal an undercurrent of coarseness and iU-breedinfr, 
which we should hardly have suspected to have lain 
hid under the solemn formalities of the most stately Court 
in history. We hear of the princesses borrowing pipes 
and tobacco from the Swiss guards, and holding a sort 
of orgie when the king had retired for the night, or 
letting off crackers under Monsieur's windows at mid- 
night, to his great indignation; we hear of one great 
lady calling another a wine-sack, and the other replying 
that it was better to be a wine- sack than a rag- sack; 
we hear of the Duchess of Berry being carried to bed 
drunk after a supper-party, and of the " Grand Squire " 
grossly insulting a Grand Duchess at Monseigneur's 
card-table. 

Human nature needs some relief from perpetual con- 
straint, and as the gravest kings had their jesters to 
amuse their idle moments, so at Versailles there were 
professed buffoons and butts for ridicule, ready-made 
to endure every sort of insult and practical joke, with- 
out venturing on resistance or retaliation. A creature 
of this kind was the Princess d'Harcourt — " a sort of 
personage," says Saint Simon, " whom it is a good thing 
to make known, in order to know more thoroughly a 

1 Saint Simon's authority for this story is the first squire, who told 
it to him ''with an air of ravishment," having heard it himself from 
one of the valets. 



54 SAINT SIMON. 

Court which did not scruple to receive such beings ; " 
and then he describes her : " Tall, fat, the colour of 
milk-porridge, with thick uglj lips, and hair like tow 
Dirty and sluttish, always intriguing, pretend 
ing, attempting, always quarrelling, . . . she was a 
white fury — nay more, she was a Harpy, for she had all 
the effrontery, the wickedness, the deceit and violence 
of one, as well as its avarice and greediness." 

Although nominally a devote of Madame de Main- 
tenon's type, this princess cheated at cards in the most 
barefaced manner, and stormed and screamed if detected. 
She flew into fits of blind passion on the smallest pro- 
vocation, and abused and beat her servants, until one 
stalwart chambermaid retaliated, locked the door, and 
then belaboured her mistress with a broom-handle till 
she howled for mercy. One cold winter's night, some of 
the more mischievous courtiers, headed by Saint Simon's 
model prince, the Duke of Burgundy, got into her room 
and pelted her with snowballs. 

" This filthy creature in her bed, roused from sleep with a 
start, bruised and drenched with the snow all over her ears 
and head, dishevelled, screaming at the top of her voice, and 
wriggling like an eel, without knowing where to hide her- 
self, was a sight that diverted them all for more than half 
an hour ; so that the nymph floated in her bed, while the 
water, trickling from it on all sides, flooded the whole room. 
It was enough to make one burst with laughter. The next 
day she sulked and was laughed at more than ever." 

It is hardly credible that this brutality should have 
occurred at Versailles ; yet Saint Simon describes the 
scene as if he had himself taken part in it. To half- 
drown a defenceless woman with snow on a winter's 



COURT LADIES. 55 

night is a piece of malicious horseplay, that might have 
come naturally from Panurge or Friar John, hut seems 
strangely out of place in a Court celebrated for the per- 
fection of fine manners, where the king would gravely 
take his hat off to the humblest chambermaid, and in 
an age when vice itself was supposed to have " lost half 
its evil by losing all its grossness." 

" Would to God," says Sauit Simon, " that Madame 
de Maintenon had only women like Madame de Dangeau 
about her ! " He describes most of her friends and 
favourites as having no redeeming qualities except ex- 
treme servility and devotion a Voutranee. For instance, 
there was the family of Heudicourt, all of whom seemed 
to have been well received at Court. Of the mother, 
Saint Simon says no one could possibly have been 
" more gratuitously, more continuously, more desperately 
■\yicked." Her husband was "an old rascal, extremely 
debauched, and the son was a species of satyr as wicked 
as, and even uglier than, the father ; a great drunkard, 
yet irresistible with the ladies, who worshipped him, and 
always spoke of him as ' the good little fellow.' " 

Another charming creature, who " was at all the 
Marly s, although the horror of all the world," was the 
Princess de Montauban, who we are told was "hump- 
backed, all on one side, extremely ugly, and covered 
with white paint, rouge, and blue lines to mark the 
veins, tricked out with patches, ornaments, and trinkets, 
which she kept on till more than eighty, when she died. 
Toothing was so shameless, so dissolute, so greedy, so 
strangely wicked as this sort of monster, although she 
had plenty of talent of the worst kind, and could often 
make herself agreeable when it pleased her." 



56 SAINT SIMON. 

Space forbids our dwelling further on these pictures 
of the ladies of the Court — still less can we follow Saint 
Simon through those " laughable adventures," those 
" ridiculous situations," those " pleasant anecdotes," that 
so often form the headings of his chapters. Those who 
make the search for themselves will be well repaid for 
their trouble. Nothing in Moliere's comedies is more 
ludicrous than some of these scenes from Court life : 
Madame de Eupelmonde playing cards in the crowded 
drawing-room at Marly, and gravely ordered to go to 
bed by the Swiss groom of the chambers ; the old Ma- 
dame de St Herem, who was so afraid of thunder that 
she used to get under her bed and make all her servants 
get on top of it, piled one above the other, and who had 
love made to her in rather too demonstrative a fashion 
by an escaped lunatic (" she was hideous at eighteen, 
and was then eighty," says Saint Simon, parenthetically); 
the romantic love-story of La Coetlogon ; the troubles of 
La Meilleraye, whose husband, St Ruth, kept her in 
order with a cudgel ; the eccentricities of Lauzun ; the 
pranks of Coislin and Courcillon, — all these are some 
of the " bagatelles " which Saint Simon apologises for 
recounting, but which, as he justly says, give life and 
reality to his picture of the times. 



67 



CHAPTEE V. 

PKINCES AND PRINCESSES. 

1^0 spot of country is at once so interesting and so 
melancholy as the valley of the Seine round Paris. 
Each hill and village, as we see them from the railroad, 
recalls its memories of the past ; each palace and cha- 
teau are associated with the reign of the great king ; and 
wherever we tread in this region, " a history is beneath 
our feet." Versailles in its lonely magnificence ; the de- 
serted Trianons ; the valley of Port Eoyal, as desolate as 
Glencoe itself ; the ruined walls of Saint Cyr ; Marly, al- 
most buried in the forest, where only a few green mounds 
mark the site of Louis's favourite retreat ; Saint Cloud, 
once " the home of all delights," now a heap of blackened 
ruins ; Saint Germains, the most picturesque of all, with 
the long terrace along which James II. walked, now dis- 
figured by a hotel, and the galleries where Henry IV. held 
his Court, vulgarised by a museum ; the vast palace of the 
Condes at Chantilly gone forever, and their hunting-lodge 
only left to its present owner ; Sceaux, so famous for its 
fetes and brilliant society, demolished to make room for 
a school of agriculture, — turn where we will, there is 
the same story of neglect, or desecration, or destruction. 



58 SAINT SIMON. 

But, in Saint Simon's time, each of these palaces was 
Versailles on a smaller scale. Le l^otre had planned the 
park, and laid out the gardens ; Mansard had designed 
the rooms ; Le Brun had painted the ceilings ; a royal 
prince held his Court there, with his own set of court- 
iers, his parasites, his lackeys, his troops of servants 
and retainers. There was an endless stream of visitors, 
who passed much as they do now from one country- 
house to another, — great hunting-parties, balls and mas- 
querades, and gambling protracted to the small hours 
of the morning. Saint Cloud seems to have been the 
most popular of all these abodes of royalty. It served 
as a half-way house between Paris and Versailles, and 
was constantly filled with nobles going to or coming 
from the Court. " The pleasures of every kind of game, 
the singular beauty of the place itself, with a thousand 
carriages standing ready for the legions of sightseers, 
the music, the good cheer — all this," says Saint Simon, 
" made of it a palace of delights." 

The master of Saint Cloud was Monsieur, the king's 
brother, the noisiest and liveliest of the Bourbons — 
short, corpulent, without natural dignity, always steeped 
in perfumes and bedizened with jewellery, a great talker, 
and a great glutton, — affable and polite, and good-natured 
to excess. But, excepting that he had courage and a 
certain knowledge of the world, he was absolutely good 
for nothing, — a weak, suspicious, meddlesome busybody. 

Monsieur's first wife was Henrietta of England, a 
charming and accomplished princess, but she had died 
suddenly in 1670. Then he had married the daughter of 
the Elector Palatine, generally known as " Madame de 
Baviere " who was as mascidine in her habits as her hus- 



" MONSIEUR." 59 

band was effeminate. She was German at heart, and 
never really domesticated herself in her French home. 
All her affections turned to her beloved Heiclelbergj where 
she would rather (she says) have a good plate of sour- 
krout and smoked sausages than all the delicacies you 
could offer her. While Monsieur was hunting, or en- 
tertaining his friends at Saint Cloud, Madame was tak- 
ing long solitary walks, or ^vriting interminable letters 
in a little back room with German paladins depicted on 
the tapestry, or talking with her little German maid 
Eessola. 

Saint Simon always speaks respectfully of Madame. 
Although she had " the figure and the roughness of a 
Swiss guard," she was true and honest — sincere both in 
her likes and dislikes — and these were rare qualities 
at Versailles. Moreover, she shared his abhorrence of 
Madame de Maintenon. ''All the evil," she says, 
" that has yet been written of this diabolical woman, still 
falls short of the actual truth." She especially disliked 
to see the young princesses waiting upon the great 
lady, handing her the dishes and changing the plates. 
Madame looked on in silent indignation, and when asked 
to help them — "/have not been brought up to such 
mean services," she answered, " and am too old to give 
myself up to such child's play. " 

Madame's pride suffered a severe blow in 1692. The 
king had determined that her son, then the Duke de 
Chartres and afterwards 'the Eegent Orleans, should 
marry Mademoiselle de Blois — one of his illegitimate 
daughters. J^aturally enough, Madame's strict notions 
of propriety were outraged by the mere thought of 
such a mesalliance^ but she could not help herself. 



60 SAINT SIMON. 

Louis had set his heart on the marriage ; neither her 
husband nor her son dared to say a word against it ; 
and Madame had to give her consent, — which she gave, 
says Saint Simon, " with tears in her eyes and fury in 
her heart." The same evening — 

" I found all the world talking in little groups, and great 
astonishment depicted on every face. Madame kept walk- 
ing up and down the gallery with her favourite maid of 
honour — striding along with great steps, her handkerchief 
in her hand, talking and gesticulating in a loud tone, and 
actmg admirably the part of Ceres furiously searching for 
her daughter Proserpine, and demanding her back from 
Jupiter. Every one left the ground clear for her, and only 
passed through the gallery on their way to the drawing- 
room. Monseigneur and Monsieur had sat down to lans- 
quenet ; and never was anything so shamefaced and utterly 
disconcerted as Monsieur's countenance and whole appear- 
ance. His son (the Duke of Chartres) seemed in despair, and 
the bride-elect in the greatest sorrow and embarrassment. 



t>' 



"At supper the king showed his usual ease of manner. 
Madame's eyes were full of tears, which fell from time to 
time, though she dried them now and then, as she looked 
round at every face as if to see what they thought of it 
all. Her son also had his eyes very red, and neither of 
them could eat anything. I noticed that the king offered 
Madame nearly all the dishes in front of him, and that she 
refused them all with a rudeness which did not in the least 
diminish his air of respect and politeness. It was also much 
remarked that after leaving the table, and when the circle 
round his Majesty was dispersing, the king made a very 
marked and low reverence to Madame, during which she 
performed such a complete pirouette that the king, as he 
raised his head, found nothing but her back towards him, 
only removed a step nearer the door. 



" MONSIEUR. 61 

**The next morning Madame was at the levee, and her 
son approached her, as he did every day, to kiss her hand. 
But just then Madame gave him such a sounding box on the 
ear, that it was heard some paces oif, and, delivered as it 
was in the presence of the whole Court, covered the unfor- 
tunate prince with confusion, and excited prodigious aston- 
ishment in the crowd of lookers-on, of whom I was one.^' 

Monsieur soon disappears from the Memoirs. His 
life of gluttony and dissipation had ruined his health ; 
and one morning his confessor — " good little Father Tre- 
voux" — told him plainly that he was not going to he 
damned on Monsieur's account ; that he must change his 
habits and take care of himself ; that he was old, used- 
up, fat, short-necked, and to all appearances would die 
of apoplexy, and that very soon. These were terrible 
words (says Saint Simon) to a prince, " the most vo- 
luptuous and most attached to life that has ever been 
known ; " and Monsieur said his prayers more frequently, 
grew triste, and talked less than usual — " that is to say, 
only about as much as three or four women." 

Shortly afterwards there was a scene between him 
and the king at Marly, in which both lost their tempers, 
and Monsieur came out from the interview with his face 
so flushed and inflamed with passion, that some of the 
ladies suggested he should be bled at once — " but more 
for the sake of saying something than anything else." 
Unfortunately, however, his surgeon was old and not 
skilful with the lancet, — "he had missed fire before," 
Monsieur did not wish to be bled by him, and, in order 
not to vex him, would not be bled by any one else. 
The consequence was that he died of apoplexy the same 
evening. There was great consternation both at Marly 



62 SAINT SIMON. 

and Saint Cloud, and the usual confusion followed in the 
household — the women especially, " who had lost their 
amusement and consideration, running hither and thither, 
and shrieking with dishevelled hair like so many 
Bacchantes," The king wept a good deal. Madame 
shut herself up in her room, and, " m the midst of her 
grief, kept calling out ' No convent ! Let no one speak 
of a convent ! I will have nothing to do with a convent ! ' 
This excellent princess had not lost her reason, for 
she knew by the terms of her marriage settlement that 
when she became a widow, she might choose between 
a chateau and a convent." As a matter of fact she 
retired to neither one nor the other, but still lived on 
at Saint Cloud. 

At Chantilly was the palace of the Cond^s, and here 
lived Henri de Bourbon, generally known as "M. le 
Prince," the son of the great soldier of the Fronde. 
Saint Simon gives him a terribly bad character; all 
the nobler qualities of the " Grand Conde " seemed to 
have been distorted and perverted in his successor, — 
" an unnatural son, a cruel father, a terrible husband, 
a detestable master, a dangerous neighbour ; without 
friendship and without friends, and incapable of having 
any." * 

His unfortunate wife suffered terribly from his fits 
of passion ; and although she was herself " disgustingly 
ugly, virtuous, and foolish," this did not prevent her 
husband being jealous of her. He abused her, kicked 
and beat her, and dragged her about with him from 
place to place at all hom^s of the day and night. His 
own habits were most eccentric : he had always four 
dinners ready for him at his various country-houses — ■ 



M. LE PKINCE. 63 

but, Saint Simon says, none of them cost him miicli. 
Some soup and half a roast chicken was all that he 
ever ordered at each place. 

In his earlier days he had been the Lothario of the 
Court, and we are told that the stories of his intrigues 
and love adventures would fill volumes. He would 
put on every sort of disguise to make his way to the 
fair lady of the hour. He spent millions on tlie 
Marchioness of Eichelieu, and on one occasion hired 
the whole side of one of the streets near Saint Sulpice, 
furnished the houses, and then broke down the con- 
necting walls to reach the place of rendezvous. 

There was no end to the freaks he played on his 
unfortunate neighbours. One of them, by name Eose, 
refused to sell him a park that adjoined his property, 
whereupon M. le Prince turned three or four hundred 
foxes loose across the boundary walls of the estate. 
" You may imagine," says Saint Simon, " the disorder 
caused by this band of marauders, and the extreme 
surprise of Eose and his people at this inexhaustible 
swarm of foxes that had sprung up in a single night." 
Eose, however, was a man of spirit, and complained to 
the king, and his tormentor had to apologise, clear the 
ground of foxes, and repair damages. 

In his later years M. le Prince was subject to all kinds 
of hallucinations. He fancied himself a dog, and would 
bark and snap at his valets ; then he thought hiuiself 
dead, and was with some difficulty persuaded by his 
doctor that dead men occasionally eat and drank. 
Some obliging persons were induced to pretend them- 
selves to be dead, in order to get M. le Prince to eat 
his dinner in their company, and the " dialogues des 



64 SAINT SIMON. 

morts " tliat took place on these occasions nearly made 
his doctor expire with laughter. At last, to every one's 
great relief, in 1709, M. le Prince died in real earnest. 
" !N^ot a soul regretted him ; neither servants, nor friends, 
nor children, nor wife." Madame la Princesse — the poor, 
little, ugly, forsaken woman — did indeed shed some tears, 
but apologised for her inconsistency in doing so. 

" M. le Due," who succeeded to the family honours, 
only survived his father some eleven months. Like the 
rest of Conde's descendants, he was marvellously short, — 
like a gnome, with a monstrous head and a projecting 
stomach, and a complexion of a livid yellow. " He 
had an air so haughty and audacious, that one could 
hardly get accustomed to him. . . . All the furies 
seemed to torment him perpetually, and to make him as 
terrible as those wild animals which appear to be only 
created to devour and make war upon the human race." 
Even his pleasantry took a dangerous turn, and his 
guests at Chantilly lived in terror of their lives. He 
threw a plate at Count Fiesque's head for venturing to 
contradict him at table; and he poisoned Santeuil (a 
good-natured writer of vers de soeiete) by emptying a 
box of Spanish snuff into his champagne -glass — "to 
see what the effect of it would be." ^ It was not long, 
adds Saint Simon, before he was enlightened, for the 
unfortunate poet died the same evening in horrible 
agony. 

1 This was not the first time that Santeuil had suffered from the 
high spirits of his fine friends at Chantilly. One evening at snpper, 
Madame la Duchesse, afi'ronted at some real or supposed neglect of 
his, boxed his ears, and then, on his looking angry, threw a glass of 
water in his face, observing pleasantly that it was only the rain after 
the thunder. 



MADAME LA DUCHESSE. 65 

It is pleasant to turn from M. le Due to Madame la 
Ducliesse (a daughter of Louis by Madame de Montespan). 
Although Saint Simon both feared and hated her — and 
with some reason, as we shall see hereafter — he cannot 
help admiring her, and he has described her as "the 
queen of pleasure and delight, . . . with a figure 
formed by the tenderest loves," and " with all the charms 
and all the dangers of the siren of the poets ; " loving 
no one, and known to love no one, yet irresistible even 
with those who most hated her ; yet, with all her attrac- 
tions, cruel, heartless, and implacable — a faithless friend 
and a relentless enemy. How she reigned over the 
society at Meudon, and how she domineered over 
Monseigneur, will be told in another chapter. 



F.C. — ^X. E 



66 



CHAPTER VI. 

MADAME DE MAINTENON. 

Madame de Maintenon is still the same femme incom^ 
p7'im that she was in her own day. No two critics 
agree in their estimate of her life and character. We 
have two pictures of her so utterly unlike, that they seem 
to describe two different persons ; the popular one, drawn 
by Voltaire and Saint Simon, representing her as utterly 
false and unscrupulous, cruel and bigoted, a heartless 
adventuress — while from the other canvas there smiles 
upon us the gracious and beneficent foundress of Saint 
Cyr, the devoted wife, and the much -enduring and 
much-maligned keeper of the royal conscience. Which 
of these two portraits is the truer one, must be left to 
higher authorities to determine; but, even taking her 
as we find her, on the evidence of her own letters, and 
accepting all that her apologists have found to say in 
her favour, we can only conclude, with Madame du 
Deffand, in conceiving " a high opinion of her mind, 
little esteem for her heart, and no taste for her person ; 
but a thorough belief in her sincerity." Those again 
who read Saint Simon's account of her, must remember 
that, in her case, he is the most partial and prejudiced 



MADAME I)E MAINTENON. 67 

of witnesses. He hated her so intensely, that if she 
had possessed all the virtues and all the graces that ever 
fell to the lot of woman, she Avoiild still have been to 
him the widoAV Scarron who had made herself a queen. 
He never mentions her name without adding some term 
of abuse — " a Creole," " an old sorceress," " an obscure 
and artful maid-servant," "a woman of the streets." 
Indeed he proves too much against his enemy. Had 
she been all that he says she was — a false and selfish 
intriguante, mean, narrow-minded, and thoroughly un- 
scrupulous, "consistent only in her love of power" — 
she could hardly have been honoured and almost idolised 
by a prince like Louis, with his strong common-sense 
and keen insight into character. Saint Simon would 
say that he was bewitched by this enchantress. Yes ; 
but would the charm have lasted thirty years ? During 
all these years we find nothing but the most devoted 
respect and attachment on one side, and the most un- 
wearied care and solicitude on the other. If Madame 
de Maintenon was nothing better than Becky Sharp on 
a grander scale, surely time must have found her out. 
An adventuress cannot keep on the mask for ever. 

But putting her character aside for the present, no 
romance ever contained incidents so strange as the 
realities of her life. The daughter of a broken spend- 
thrift — '•'' peut-etre gentilliomme,^^ says Saint Simon — born 
in a prison on a foreign island ; so sickly as an infant, 
that she was once nearly thrown into the sea for dead 
on the homeward voyage ; then left a penniless orphan, 
and earning her livelihood as a half-starved drudge in a 
relative's household, — feeding the poultry and measuring 
out the corn ; then imprisoned in a convent, and perse- 



68 SAINT SIMON. 

cuted by nuns and priests to change her creed ; after- 
wards married out of pity by Scarron, a crippled and 
deformed buffoon-rhymester {cul-de-jatte), but in a few 
years left a widow in the prime of her beauty, and 
thrown upon the world without money and without 
position, — such was the story, briefly told, of the early 
life of Francoise d'Aubigne, afterwards known in history 
as Madame de Maintenon. 

Saint Simon hints at scandals connected with her life 
in the days of her widowhood ; indeed he names several 
of her more favoured admirers, and the fact of her inti- 
mate friendship with IsTinon de TEnclos certainly tells 
against her.^ But in this point her very faults probably 
saved her from temptation. She was too cold, too self- 
ish, — " trop gauche pour I'amour," as Ninon said,^ — and 
too greedy of reputation, ever to give way to any warmer 
feeling than that of sentiment. She could nurse a sick 
friend, she could sympathise with sorrow, she could com- 
passiona,te suffering, she could devote herself to children, 
she could write charming letters brimful of tears and 
sensibility, — but she was incapable of love. For the 
one absorbing idea of her life was, that all men should 
speak well of her ; and she set herself to work to please 
and fascinate the society in which she found herself at 
the H' el d'Albret and the Hotel Eichelieu, just as she 
afterw; ds mide it her business first to captivate and 

1 M. Feuillet de Conches has in his possession the original of a let- 
ter, written by Ninon to Saint Svremond, which ends thus: "S. 
[Scarron] estoit mon amy ; sa fame m'a donne mille plaisirs par sa 
conversation et, dans le terns, je I'ai trouve trop gauche pour I'amonr. 
Quant aux details, je ne scay rien, mais je lui ai prestay souvent ma 
chamhre jauue a elle et a Villarseaux " — Causeries d'un Curieux, ii. 
588. 



MADAME DE MAIN TENON. 69 

then to interest and amuse her royal husband. In one 
of her letters she tells us the secret of her popularity 
in these days. "Women liked me," she says, "because 
I was pleasant in company, and troubled myself more 
about others than myself ; aud men followed me because 
I had the beauty and the grace of youth. Indeed, the 
taste they had for me was more in the way of a general 
friendship than love." So charming did she make her- 
self, that her confessor once ordered her "to be weari- 
some in society " by way of penance. 

But all this time, in spite of her fine friends and social 
distinctions, she was fighting a hard battle against poverty. 
Scarron's death had left her with little more than the four 
traditional louis cCor which she is said to have brought 
him by way of dowry ; and the pension which the poet 
had received from the Government, was refused to his 
widow. She had barely sufficient money to buy food and 
clothing. At last, in 1664, came the crisis of her life. She 
happened to meet Madame de Montespan — the reigning 
sultana — at the Hotel d'Albret, and the great lady was 
so charmed with her new acquaintance that she prevailed 
on Louis to grant her a pension. Soon afterwards "the 
widow Scarron " was appointed governess to Montespan's 
children, secretly borne by her to the king; and as a 
reward for the unceasing care and devotion with which 
she reared them from infancy to childhood, she received 
the estate and title of Maintenon. But in these days 
Louis regarded her with little favour. His presents to 
her had been made on the express condition that he 
should never see or hear of her again : " the creature," 
as he called his future wiie, " was insufferable," and he 
had aheady given her far more than she deserved. The 



70 SAINT SIMON. 

first sign of his prejudice giving way was the pleasure he 
showed in reading some of her letters, giving an account 
of his children's health, and theii* visits to various water- 
ing-places ; and, even on the most trivial subjects, few 
writers (as Saint Simon is obliged to admit) could ex- 
press themselves so simply, so pleasantly, and yet so 
eloquently.^ Then by degrees his Majesty found that 
the lady could talk even more pleasantly than she wrote; 
that there was a solidite about her conversation rarely 
found among her frivolous sex ; that her temper never 
varied ; that her manners had an incomparable charm ; 
and that her intelligence and good sense soothed and 
refreshed him after all he had endured from the moods 
and humours of Madame de Montespan. And thus by 
degrees she became necessary to his comfort and con- 
venience ; he resorted to her for assistance in his doubts 
and difficulties ; she almost took the place of his con- 
fessor ; she lectured him on the frailties of his past life ; 
and the two would sit for hours together, evening after 
evening, — she talking earnestly and gravely, while he 
listened to her in rapt attention. 

Other circumstances contributed to increase her influ- 
ence. Louis had passed the prime of life, and time had 
sobered the strong passions of his youth. Warnings, 
moreover, had come to him in various shapes. His 

1 Napoleon read her letters at St Helena, and said of them, "The 
style, the grace, the purity of the latiguage enchant me. I think I 
prefer them to those of Madame de Sevigne — they tell you more 
{dies vous disent plus de choses)." 

Madame de Maintenon left fourteen volumes of letters behind her, 
and a complete edition of them is now being edited by M. Theophile 
Lavallee— complete, that is, as she left them ; but she seems to have 
herself purposely destroyed many of the most important. 



MADAME DE MONTESPAX. 71 

confessor had reminded him of the scandal and danger 
of living in mortal sin ; Bourdaloue had not scrupled to 
apply to him, from the pulpit, the story of David and 
Uriah ; and the sight of his last victim, Fontanges, a girl 
of eighteen, dying suddenly and miserably, touched him 
with keen remorse, and served to complete the good work 
begun by Madame de Maintenon. At length Madame de 
Montespan, although furious with indignation at being 
so treacherously supplanted by an "elderly governess," 
as she called her rival, saw herself that her reign was 
over, and she finally left Versailles in 1686, never to 
return. 

Saint Simon touches on Montespan's subsequent liis- 
tory with what is for him an unusually gentle hand. " It 
was years," he says, " before she could accustom herself to 
a life of retreat. She carried her leisure and restlessness 
about with her from place to place. At last God touched 
her heart. Her sin had never been accompanied by 
forgetfuhiess. She used often to leave the king, to pray 
in her own chamber." And now it seemed as if no 
penance and humiliation could be too severe — the 
roughest clothing or the coarsest food ; but perhaps the 
most terrible atonement of all was that insisted on by 
her confessor — to ask her husband to receive her again 
on any terms. She wrote him a humble letter, as she 
was bidden; but his only answer was, that he neither 
wished to see her face nor hear her name asfain. 

o 

Still, even in her retirement, she seems to have bpen 
a person much sought after. Her house was filled in- 
cessantly by a stream of visitors. "All France used 
to go there," says Saint Simon, " and she received her 
guests with the air and manner of a queen, . ^ .. 



72 SAINT SIMON. « 

beautiful as the day to the last hour of her life ; " still 
charming all hearers with that graceful play of wit pecu- 
liar to her family, and known as the esprit de Mortemart; 
and still occasionally indulging in sallies of that ridicule 
which had formerly so keen an edge, that the courtiers 
avoided her windows at Versailles if she was standing 
in the balcony, for it was worse (so they said) than 
passing under a drawn sword. Like other fair peni- 
tents, Montespan apparently found it easier to mortify 
her body than to curb her tongue. 

Although always in excellent health, the fear of death 
haunted her continually. She even paid women to sit 
up all night long in her bedroom, and kept candles burn- 
ing at the windows while she slept. But when death 
came upon her at last, these terrors disappeared, and she 
died with the most perfect resignation. Shortly before 
she expired, Antin, her only legitimate son, arrived and 
asked to see his mother. With the heartlessness that 
seems to have been his second nature, he looked at 
her curiously and coldly for a few moments, wished 
her farewell, and scarcely waited tiU she breathed her 
last. He gave some directions about her funeral, and 
then galloped off to hunt with his friend Monseigneur. 
Her other children showed a more natural feeling, and 
mourned for her with some sincerity ; but (Saint Simon 
tells us) it was the poor people in her neighbom^hood, on 
whom she had lavished haK her fortune in her latter 
years, who showed the most genuine sorrow. Madame 
de Maintenon shed tears when she heard the news — • 
tears of remorse. Saint Simon thinks ; but the king, 
for whom Montespan had sacrificed her happiness and 
honourj showed such indifference, that even the Duchess 



MADAME DE MAINTENON S MAERTAGE. 73 

of Burgundy expressed surprise that her death had not 
affected him more. " She has been dead to me," ho 
repKed, " ever since I bade her farewell years ago." 

Meanwhile fortune seemed to smile upon Montespan's 
successful rival. In 1683 the queen, Maria Theresa, 
died — happy, perhaps, in being at last released from a 
life of sorrow and neglect. Forced always to ignore the 
infidelities of her husband, she had been grateful for the 
smallest kindness, and especially for the consideration 
always shown her by Madame de Maintenon. " I be- 
lieve," said the poor woman, '' that God raised her up 
to give me back the heart that Madame de Montespan 
had robbed me of. ISTever have I been so well treated 
by the king as from the day he first listened to her." 
]^ot only did she give the Marchioness a portrait of her- 
self, set in diamonds ; but on her deathbed she drew off 
her signet-ring and put it on Madame de Maintenon's 
hand, thus giving her, as it were, a right of succession. 
The Marchioness was then leaving the room, when the 
Duke of Eochefoucauld stopped her. " This is not the 
time to leave the king," said he ; " you must stay, for 
his Majesty has need of you ; " and she stayed accord- 
ingly. 

That she was actually married to Louis before two 
years had elapsed there can be no reasonable doubt. 
Voltaire speaks of their marriage as a well-known fact ; 
and Saint Simon says that Bontems, the king's valet, 
among other marks of confidence, had been intrusted 
with the arrangement of the midnight Mass held in the 
winter of 1685, when the Archbishop of Paris solem- 
nised their marriage before a few witnesses. Indeed the 
marriage would have been made public the next day had 



74 SAINT SIMON. 

not Louvois gone on his knees before Louis, and im- 
plored him not to disgrace himself in the eyes of Europe. 
But, whether acknowledged or not. Saint Simon does not 
conceal his own belief that, in celebrating this marriage 
at all, Louis had sealed his own doom. 

" Thus it was that Providence prepared for the proudest 
of kings the profoundest, the most public, the most last- 
ing, and the most unheard-of humiliation. .. . . All 
that resulted — her triumph, his entire confidence in her, his 
rare dependence on her, her absolute power, the public and 
universal adoration paid her by Ministers, generals, the 
royal family — all, in a word, at her feet ; everything good 
and lucky obtained through her, and everything refused unless 
she asked it ; men, affairs of state, patronage, justice, favour, 
religion — everything without exception was in her hands, 
and the kincj and the state were her victims. What kind ot 
woman she was, this incredible enchantress, and how she 
governed without a break, without an obstacle, without the 
slightest cloud, for more than thirty whole years — this is the 
incomparable spectacle which it concerns us to retrace, as it 
has long since concerned the whole of Europe." 

Erom this year, 1685, Madame de Maintenon was 
Queen of France in all but the name, and no queen in 
history was ever so exclusive or difficult of access. Her 
room at Versailles was a sanctuary to which none were 
admitted but the royal family, the Ministers of State, 
and a few intimate friends. Saint Simon himself pro- 
bably never set foot across the threshold, and all he 
knew of its mistress was from some of the more privi- 
leged courtiers. In this room Madame de Maintenon 
remained the whole day when she w^as not at Saint Cyr, 
enshrined in what she called her ''niche" — a three- 
cornered sofa of led damask; and here she received her 



MADAME DE MAIN TENON 75 

visitors, always seated herself, and never rising even to 
receive the Queen of England when she came over from 
Saint Gerniains to call on her. Occasionally, when 
Louis had no work with his Ministers, select dinners, 
sometimes followed by music or theatricals, took place in 
her apartment ; but ordinarily the Ministers would bring 
their portfolios after dinner, and the king would work 
for hours while Madame de Maintenon sat at her em- 
broidery listening to the discussion, but never volun- 
teering her advice, knowing that, as a matter of fact, 
it would always be asked sooner or later. " Que 
jjense-t-en Voire Solidite ? " Louis would sometimes ask 
in a bantering manner. She would smile, says Saint 
Simon, pretend utter ignorance, talk of something else, 
but eventually led back the conversation to the j)oint 
she wished to carry, or to the name of the person she 
wished to favour. But she could not always calculate 
on getting what she asked, and sometimes met with a 
rebuff that made her shed tears at the time, and kept 
her on thorns for days afterwards. Even the most 
favoured Minister could never make certain that his 
petition for some particular candidate would not meet 
with an abrupt refusal. 

" 'You do not know how the land lies,' said one of them 
to a friend. ' Of twenty matters that we brincj before the 
king, we are certain that he will pass nineteen as we wish ; 
but we are equally certain that the twentieth will be decided 
against us. Which of these twenty will be decided against 
our wish and desire is M'hat we can never tell, and very often 
it is just that matter in which we are most interested. The 
king reserves this stroke (bisque) to make us feel that he is 
master^ and that it is lie who reigns ; and if by chance some- 



76 SAINT SIMON. 

thing is proposed about whicli he has a strong opinion, and 
which is sufficiently important for us to have an opinion 
about it as well, either on account of the thing itself or for 
the desire we have that it should succeed — it is very often 
then, in the rare event of its happening, that we are certain 
to get well scolded {une sortie sure) ; but as a matter of fact, 
when the scolding is over, and the affair fallen through, the 
king — content with having shown us that we are powerless, 
and sorry to have annoyed us — becomes supple, and then 
comes the time when we can do all we want.' " 

As an instance of Madame de Maintenon's power, 
Saint Simon tells us tbat even her old servant JSTanon, 
who bad followed her fortunes from first to last, was 
always embraced by the princesses, and saluted with 
profound bows by the Ministers ; and when the Duchess 
de Lude wished for the post of Maid of Honour to the 
young Duchess of Burgundy, she sent her maid with 
twenty thousand crowns to JSTanon, as the simplest way 
of gaining her object, and the same evening she was 
gazetted to the post. " So it is with Courts," our author 
moralises ; " a Nanon sells the most important and 
brilliant offices of state ; and a rich lady — a Duchess of 
noble birth, without children or ties of any kind, but 
free and her own mistress — is foolish enough to sell her- 
self into slavery at such a price." 

One memorable scene is recorded by Saint Simon as 
showing the profound respect with which Madame de 
Maintenon was always treated by the king in public. 
" He would have been a hundred times freer with the 
queen, and shown far less gallantry." The occasion 
was the camp at Compiegne in 1608, — one of those 
magnificent displays of mimic warfare in which Louis 
delighted. Even Saint Simon's usual command of Ian- 



CAMP AT COMPIEGNE. 77 

guage almost fails him when he tries to describe the full 
splendour of the spectacle — " so startling, so entrancing, 
one must say so frightfully gorgeous " — the avenues of 
tents covered with tapestry and strewn with carpets, the 
ranges of kitchens aud stables, the aqueducts fifty miles 
long which brought water for the immense host, the 
roads blocked with endless trains of pack-horses and 
sumpter - mules, the crowds of camp-followers, the 
musicians and pastry-cooks, the tailors and wig-makers, 
the banquets served on gold and silver plate, to supply 
which the neighbouring forests were ransacked for game 
and venison, and the seas for fish ; and then the splen- 
dour of the review itself, when sixty thousand picked 
troops exercised, manoeuvred, and went through all the 
details of a regular campaign under the eyes of Louis 
and his Court. 

" But a spectacle of another sort, that I could paint forty 
years hence as well as to-day, so strongly did it impress me, 
was that which, from the summit of this rampart, the king 
presented to all his army and to the innumerable crowd of 
spectators of all kinds in the plain below. 

"Madame de Maintenon sat alone, in her sedan-chair, 
facing the plain and the troops, between its three windows 
drawn up, her porters having retired to a distance. On 
the left pole in front sat the Duchess of Burgundy, and 
on the same side, standing in a semicircle, were Madame 
la Duchesse, the Princess of Conti, and all the ladies, and 
behind them again there were some men. At the right 
window was the king, standing, and a little in the rear a 
semicircle of the most distinguished men of the Court. The 
king was nearly always uncovered, and every now and then 
stooped to speak to Madame de Maintenon, and explain to 
her what she saw, and the reason of each movement. Each 
time that he did so she was obliging enough to open the 



78 SAINT SIMON. 

window four or five inches, but never half-way, for I took 
particular notice, and I admit that I was more attentive to 
this spectacle than to that of the troops. Sometimes she 
opened the glasses of her own accord to ask some question 
of him, but generally it was he who, without waiting for 
her, stooped down to explain to her what was passing ; and 
sometimes, if she did not notice him, he tapped at the glass 
to make her open it. He never spoke save to her, except 
when he gave a few brief orders, or just answered the 
Duchess of Burgundy, who wanted to make him speak, and 
with whom Madame de Maintenon carried on a conversation 
by signs without opening the front window, through which 
the youug princess screamed a few words at her now and 
then. I carefully watched the faces of the bystanders. All 
showed an embarrassed, timid, and stealthy surprise; every 
one behind the chair and in the semicircle watched this 
scene more than what was going on in the army. The king 
often put his hat on the top of the chair in order to get his 
head in to speak, and this continual exercise tired his loins 
very much. Monseigneur was on horseback in the plain 
with the young princes. It was about five o'clock in the 
afternoon, and the weather was as brilliant as could be 
desired. 

"About the time when the town capitulated, Madame de 
Maintenon apparently asked permission to go away, for the 
king called out, 'The chairmen of Madame!' They came 
and took her away ; in less than a quarter of an hour after- 
wards the king retired also, and nearly everybody else. 
Many spoke with their eyes and nudged one another as they 
went off, or whispered in their neighbour's ear. Every- 
body was full of what had taken place on the ramparts 
between the king and Madame de Maintenon. Even the 
soldiers asked the meaning of that sedan-chair, and of the 
king every moment stooping to put his head inside of it. It 
became necessary gently to silence these questions on the part 
of the troops. What effect this sight had upon foreigners 
present, and what thev said of it, may be imagined. All over 



MADAME DE MAINTENON. 79 

Europe it was as miich talked of as the camp of Compiegne 
itseK, with all its pomp and prodigious splendour." 

Although her ambition was satisfied, it may be 
questioned if Madame de Maintenon knew any real 
happiness in these days of her power, except in the 
seclusion of Saint Cyr. Her sin — the "pec/ie de 
Lucifer,''^ of which she speaks — assuredly brought its 
own penalty. " Who knows," she writes, " whether I 
am not punished by the very excess of my prosperity 1 
Who knows whether, rightly interpreted, the language 
of Providence to me is not this, 'You have desired 
honour and glory ; you shall have them to satiety ' ? " 
Her letters are full of expressions of the weariness 
which preyed upon her continually. One day, looking 
at some fish that were restless and ill at ease in a marble 
tank^"They are like me," she said; "they long to get 
back to their mud : " and again, as she heard a young 
girl singing — "Tell me," she asked her ladies, "is not 
Jeannette's lot a happier one than mine ? " 

In one remarkable letter ^ she has described her long 
and weary day at Versailles, and tells how from seven 
in the morning till ten at night her room was filled by 
a succession of visitors going and coming ; how all the 
jealousies and discontents of her friends were poured 
into her ears ; how the women talked scandal and the 
men talked politics ; how princes and Ministers pestered 
her alike ; how she had to entertain Monseigneur, 
who never originated an idea himself, and to cheer and 

1 This interesting letter is given at length by M. Cheruel in his 
work on Saint Simon, p. 509. It will be found in Lavallee's edition 
of Madame de Maintenon 's Letters, ii. 156. 



80 SAINT SIMON. 

console Louis, who "would come back from his day's 
hunting melancholy and dispirited ; and how, when the 
evening came, she was often so fatigued herself that she 
could hold out no longer, and had to seek refuge in her 
bed ; but even then she could not sleep from sheer 
weariness of mind and body. 

Louis himself never spared her, any more than he 
spared the other ladies of his Cornet. 

" I have seen her," says Saint Simon, " travel from Marly 
or Fontainebleau so dangerously ill that one could not tell 
whether she would not die on the road. But, whatever her 
state might be, the king would come to her room at the 
usual hour, attended by his suite, without thought or care. 
It has often happened that he has thus come in while she 
was in the agonies of a feverish attack, and ordered all the 
windows to be opened, if he found them shut, to let in the 
air. If he required cards or music, her headache or any 
other infirmity was no hindrance. She must endure it all 
without complaint, and with a hundred candles flaring in 
her eyes.'' 

Then she had other vexations. Her brother, D'Au- 
bigne, was a constant source of annoyance to her. He 
was always in debt and difficulties, and many of her 
letters are addressed to him urging prudence and econ- 
omy. He was only a captain in the Guards, but com- 
plained that he ought to have been a marshal at least : 
" However," as he said once to some one who wondered 
how he could afford to play for such high stakes, "he 
had taken out his baton in money." Then he married 
badly, and things got worse. At last Madame de Main- 
tenon persuaded him to go into a kind of retreat for 
decayed gentlemen near Saint Sulpice; but D'Aubigne 
found this life so intolerablv dull that he made his 



SAINT CYR. 81 

escape into Paris, where he relapsed into his old habits. 
Finally, Madame de Maintenon, in despair, put him under 
the charge of " the stupidest priest in Saint Sulpice," 
who followed him everywhere like a shadow, and made 
his life a burden to him. Saint Simon says D'Aubigne 
was a good, honest fellow, very different from his sister, 
and that it was the best fun in the world to hear him 
talk of the king ''his brother-in-law," and of the "widow 
Scarron " of former days. 

Saint Cyr was only a few miles from Versailles, — 
dangerously near, as some people thought, like a dove- 
cot near a hawk's nest, — and in its lecture-rooms and 
gardens Madame de Maintenon would pass whole days, 
when she could be spared from Court, playing that 
" I'ole of Mentor and Minerva," which was her second 
nature ; directing, observing, advising, teaching classes, 
and surrounded by the young girls, whom she encour- 
aged to talk and question her ; telling them stories of 
her past life and of the world outside their walls, or 
writing tales and conversations to amuse them. Of 
this busy side of her life she never grew wearied. 
" J^othing," she writes, " is dearer to me than my 
children at Saint Cyr. I love the whole place, even 
to the dust beneath their feet." 

By way of giving them ease and refinement of man- 
ner, some of the elder girls were taught to act scenes 
from " Cinna " and " Andromache ; " but in the latter 
piece (there are four lovers in it) they seem to have 
overdone their parts, and Madame de Maintenon writes 
in consequence to Eacine : " Our girls have just acted 
' Andromache,' and have acted it so well that they shall 
never act it again, or any other of your pieces ; " and she 

F.C. — X. ]^. 



82 SAINT SIMON, 

requires Hm to write something moral, serious, and his- 
torical — "with no love in it." Eacine obeyed, and wrote 
"Esther," with which Madame de iMaintenon was 
charmed, — not so much by the beauty of the words as 
by the scarcely - veiled allegory which made her the 
chaste and modest Jewish maiden who triumphs over 
the imperious Yashti (Montespan) and the disgraced 
Aman (Louvois), and becomes the bride of the great 
and beneficent Ahasuerus (Louis). The piece was acted 
again and again, and on one occasion Madame de Sevigno 
was present, and says, " The harmony between the music, 
verses, hymns, and personages of the drama was so per- 
fect as to leave nothing to be desired. All was simple, 
innocent, sublime, and touching, and the hymns were 
of a beauty not to be listened to without tears." 

It was to Saint Cyr that Madame de Maintenon re- 
tired, "after seeing," as she said, "the king die like a 
saint and a hero ; " and it was here that she found the 
rest and repose she had, by her own account, longed 
for all her life. She lived in the completest retire- 
ment — reading and writing, frequently attending Mass, 
receiving the visits of a few friends, and almost for- 
gotten by the world. She was well provided for by 
the liberal pension allowed her by the Eegent, " which 
her disinterestedness had made necessary;" and, Saint 
Simon adds, "'no abbess, no daughter of France, was 
so absolute, so punctually obeyed, so feared, so re- 
spected, and at the same time so loved, as she was by 
all immured within Saint Cyr." 

We only once hear of her retreat being disturbed, and 
that was on the occasion of the Czar's visit to Paris in 
1717. When she heard he was coming to see her, Madame 



MADAME DE MAINTENON S DEATH. 83 

de Maintenon went to bed at once, as the safest place of 
refuge ; but she was not safe even there. The Czar entered 
her room, and, with the rudeness of his nation, drew aside 
the curtains of her bed and told his interpreter to ask 
her what her sickness was. " A great age " (ime gr ancle 
vieillese) was the reply; and then, after a prolonged 
stare, his Majesty withdrew without a word, and she 
was left in peace. ^ It is almost the last time that her 
name appears in history. She died at the age of 
eighty-three, listening to the hymns of her favourite 
pupils, and was buried in the chapel attached to the 
convent. "Your house shall never fail you," she had 
once written to the Abbess, " so long as there shall be 
a king of France;" and np till 1793 her prophecy held 
good. But in that year the storm of the Eevolution 
broke upon Saint Cyr : the teachers and pupils were 
dispersed, the cloisters desecrated, and the body of the 
foundress was torn from its coffin. By the pious care 
of her relation, the Duke of Noailles, her remains were 
afterwards restored to their former resting-place, and a 
simple slab of black marble may still be seen, let into 
the wall of the chapel, with the modest inscription — 

CY GIT MADAME DE MAINTENON 
1635 • 1719 • 1836. 



1 This is the ordinary account ; but Saint Simon says, ** The Czar 
said not a word to her nor she to him." 



84 



CHAPTEE VII. 

SAINT Simon's life at court. 

Enough has heen already said to show that Saint Simon 
would find himself in troubled waters at Court. In 
fact, if we except the two old Dukes of Beauvilliers and 
Chevreuse, there was scarcely a nobleman at Versailles 
whom he could call his friend. He could not dissoci- 
ate their personal qualities from what he considered their 
degraded position. What good thing could be hoped or 
looked for from men whose highest ambition it was to 
hold the king's stirrup when he mounted his horse, or 
hand him the towel when he had washed his hands 1 
What could be expected from peers of lower degree, when 
the grandest of grand seigneurs — the Duke of Eocliefou- 
cauld — regarded it as the glory of his life never to have 
slept for a single night away from Versailles for forty 
years 1 The great names of history had been tarnished 
in the persons of their degenerate descendants. Their 
very titles had lost their proud significance. " Those of 
Count and Marquis," he says, " have been dragged in the 
dust by the number of these nobodies, without an acre of 
land, who have usurped them, and hence they have fallen 
away to nothing ; so much so that even people of distinc- 
tion, who are Marquis or Count, are absurd enough (if 



SAINT SIMON'S MODEST ASPJKATIONS. 85 

they "will allow me to say so) to be annoyed when one 
gives them their title in addressing them." 

Besides losing their ancestral prestige, the nobility had 
also lost their political influence ; indeed they regarded 
politics as beneath their notice, and only fit for the sons 
of tradesmen and lawyers like Colbert and Le Tellier. 
" They had to choose between the desk and the sword," 
says Saint Simon, " and they had chosen the latter. . . . 
They were given up to ignorance, to frivolity, to pleas- 
ure, to foolish extravagance, — of no use on earth except 
to get killed in battle, and to stagnate all the rest of their 
time in the most deadly idleness." ^ One day, as Saint 
Simon was declaiming in his usual fashion against the 
degradation of his own order, in the presence of his 
friends, the two old dukes — 

" ' They let me talk on,' he says, ' for some time. At last 
the Duke of Beauvilliers got very red, and asked me in a 
severe tone, ' What is it, then, you wish for yourself that 
would content you ? ' 

" ' I will tell you, sir,' I answered, warmly; ' I should like 
to be born of a good old family; to have a fine estate also, 
with fine privileges attached to it, without dreaming of being 
extremely rich. I should be ambitious of being raised to the 
first dignity of my own part of the country ; I should like, 
besides, some important office at Court; to enjoy all that; 
and then — I should be content.' 

" The two dukes listened to me, looked at one another, 
smiled, said nothing in reply, and a moment afterwards pur- 
posely changed the subject." 



1 In the same way De Tocqueville considers one of the proximate 
causes of the French Revolution to have been the " useless, idle, and 
restless lives passed by the noblesse," who had retained their feudal 
privileges without their political power. — (See his essay in the 'West- 
minster Review' of 1836, and Aneien Regime, p. 151.) 



86 SAINT SIMON. 

The sublime egotism of these aspirations, and the 
frankness with which he coniides them to his friends — 
and to us — are highly characteristic of Saint Simon. 
This personal vein pervades almost every chapter. His 
own views, his own ideas, his own theories — how he 
lectured this friend, and how he denounced that enemy 
— what he thought of the Bull Unigenitus, what he wrote 
on the training of the Dauphin, what he said on almost 
every subject of the day, — all this, while it gives to his 
Memoirs an interest and individuality of their own, cer- 
tainly goes far to justify Marmontel's criticism — that 
Saint Simon " saw nothing in the nation but the Nobil- 
ity ; nothing in the Nobility but the Dukes and Peers ; 
and nothing in the Dukes and Peers but himself." 

His lawsuit against Luxemburg^ was only the pre- 
lude to a series of attacks upon some of the proudest 
titles in the French peerage. Amongst others, the 
Lorraines had incurred his deadly enmity by what he 
calls their " tracasseries." The Duke of Lorraine had 
married " Mademoiselle," daughter of " Monsieur," the 
king's brother, and had assumed a ducal coronet, with 
the royal fleur-de-lys, and had even claimed the title 
of "Eoyal Highness" from the people in his duchy. 
Besides these acts of insolence, the ladies of the family 
had refused to carry round the alms-plate in the chapel 
— as if they were of the blood-royal. Then the other 
Court ladies began to think the duty undignified ; and 
at last none of the duchesses, including Madame de 
Samt Simon, would undertake it. The king expressed 
his displeasure at this frivolous dispute, thinking, with 
some justice, that Saint Simon was the cause of it all. 

I See p. 35. 



SAINT SIMON NAMED AMBASSADOR. 87 

" Since he had left the army," he complained, " he had 
done nothing but study questions of precedence ; and it 
would serve him right if he were to banish him from 
Court altogether." 

This thunder from Olympus alarmed Saint Simon, and 
he at once obtained an audience of the king, when he 
explained and apologised for himself. Had he had any 
idea that he was offending his Majesty, he " would have 
carried round the plate himself, like a village church- 
warden." The disturbance, he declared, was entirely 
owing to the Lorraines — more especially to " M. le 
Grand," Louis de Lorraine, then sixty years of age, who 
was a personal friend of the king's, and, even by Saint 
Simon's own showing, the greatest nobleman at the 
Court. To quarrel with him was almost like flying in 
the face of royalty itself. 

He seems, however, for the time, to have made his 
peace with the king, for, not very long after the " Affair 
of the Alms-Eate," he was, to his great surprise, nomi- 
nated Ambassador to Eome — a high honour for a young 
duke of thbty. But such an appointment then, as now, 
involved considerable expense, and Saint Simon was in 
doubt as to whether he could afford to accept it. His 
friends, however, strongly advised his doing so — he might 
take it without being absolutely ruined, the Chancellor 
told him ; and his wife gave him the same advice. 

He takes this opportunity of telling us of the high 
compliment paid by the Ministers on this occasion to his 
wife's good sense, and how they advised him to keep 
nothing secret from her in his embassy — " to have her at 
the end of the table when he wrote and read despatches, 
and to ask her opinion on all occasions." He says that 



88 SAINT SIMON. 

lie always did so, and never found any one's advice so 
wise, so judicious, and so useful. 

But Saint Simon never went as ambassador to Tlome 
after all. The appointment was cancelled a few days 
after it was announced — to his wife's (and jDossibly to 
his own) great relief ; and he attributes this blow to his 
dignity to his enemies at Court, and, above all, " to the 
strange aversion of Madame de Maintenon." His very 
virtues, he declares, had told against him in this matter. 
Louis was jealous of a young man reported to be not only 
" a boaster, a grumbler, and fuU of theories," but besides, 
" to have talent, learning, capacity, and application, — in 
short, to have every quality necessary to a statesman" 
(liomme enfin ires propre aux affaires). Thus, while 
men far inferior to him intellectually, but more adroit 
courtiers, were daily receiving fresh honours and ap- 
pointments, — pensions, and governorships, and abbeys, 
and preferments of every kind, — Saint Simon found him- 
self left out in the cold, unnoticed and undistinguished. 
Nor did his position improve as time went on. Instead 
of making the attempt to swim with the stream, and 
conciliate his opponents, he seems to have continually 
made fresh enemies. Not content with attacking the 
Lorraines, and other peers, on questions of precedence, 
he embroiled himself with the " Meudon cabal "■'• (the 
Dauphin's set) ; he made two bitter personal enemies in 
Antin and the Duke of Maine — the ablest and most pop- 
ular men of the rising generation — and he gave great 
offence to Louis by betting five pistoles with some boast- 
ful courtier that the fortress of Lille would be taken by 
the enemy before it could be relieved by Vendome. As 

1 See p. 147. 



SAINT SIMON EETIRES TO LA FEKTE. 89 

he confesses, it was a rash and foolish wager, that ought 
never to have been made ; and as tlie fact of the fortress 
surrendering, after a heroic defence, increased the king's 
prejudice against this young duke, who seemed to be as 
unpatriotic as he was free of speech. Saint Simon soon 
paid the penalty for his imprudence, and indeed began to 
find his position at Court so embarrassing, with enemies 
and calumniators on all sides of him, that he determined 
for a time to leave Versailles altogether, and, as he says, 
"to breathe a healthier and more peaceful air" at his 
country seat. 

There he was joined by Chamillart, the disgraced 
Foreign Minister, who had been, like his friend, attacked 
by some of the Dauphin's clique at Meudon, and who 
had been too proud or too honest to stoop to conciliate 
them. Saint Simon tells us how serenely and cheer- 
fully Chamillart bore his change of fortune, but notices 
that he would never be alone for a moment if he could 
help it — "like a man who fears himself, and seeks to 
fill the void he feels m his own heart." 

After Chamillart had left. Saint Simon still stayed on 
at La Ferte ; indeed he had some idea of settling down 
there altogether, but his wife, with her usual good sense, 
pointed out the absurdity of his thus burying himself in 
the country, where he would soon get tired of his books 
and solitary walks. His friend Pontchartrain (the Chan- 
cellor) took the same view, and it ended in Saint Simon's 
returning to Versailles. 

He was greatly struck, on his return, by the isolated 
position of his old friend and comrade, the Duke of 
Orleans. This prince, who had always Lean more or less 
out of favour at Court, had lately given mortal offence 



90 SAINT SIMON. 

to two powerful ladies, Madame de Maintenon and the 
Princess des TJrsins, by styling them, in an after-dinner 
speech, " the She - Captain " and " She - Lieutenant " of 
France. The sting of this jest lay in its evident truth, 
and both these women determined to revenge them- 
selves on the perpetrator of this " fatal hon-7not." It 
was not difficult to injure Orleans's reputation, for it was 
abeady sufficiently bad. He was said to have conspired 
against the Spanish Crown — to have intended to divorce 
(if not poison) his own wife, then marry the sister- 
in-law of the late King of Spain, and then imitate the 
unnatural conduct of William III. of England, by de- 
throning his near relative, the Duke of Anjou. A storm 
of indignation had broken out. Even Monseigneur had 
been roused from his usual apathy, and had demanded 
that Orleans should be impeached on a charge of con- 
spiracy and high treason. This proposal was seriously 
debated in the Cabinet, and the Chancellor privately 
asked Saint Simon what would be the proper form of 
impeachment in such a case. Saint Simon, however, 
assured him that the high treason, if committed at all, 
was against Spain, not France, and that the accused 
must accordingly be tried by a Spanish, and not by a 
French, tribunal. 

Saint Simon next resolved to rescue Orleans, if 
possible, from his degraded and isolated position at 
Court, and, as a first step, to break off his liaison with 
a Madlle. de Sery (afterwards known as Madame d'Argen' 
ton) — the Phyllis, without whom he declared, in some 
very indifferent verses, life would be insupportable. 
To break off this connection was a difficult as well 
as a delicate task ; and those sixty pages, in which 



SAINT SIMON RESCUES ORLEANS. 91 

Saint Simon tells us how powerfully he worked upon 
the better feelings of the prince, contain some of the 
finest passages in his Memoirs. He placed before 
Orleans " the choice of Hercules " over again — but 
clothed in language that might have come from the lips 
of Bossuet or Bourdaloue. He enlarged on the great 
possibilities of the futme, to a prince of the rank and 
position occupied by Orleans, "on the steps of the throne 
itself ; " he placed on one hand the lustre and brilliancy 
of a life devoted to high and noble purposes, the honour 
of his country, the esteem of his peers, the confidence of 
his sovereign, — and on the other side he draws a hideous 
picture of nobles " whom their bhth, their family, their 
establishment, and their dignity should naturally have 
carried to the distinctions due to their position, degraded 
by their debauchery, unknown at Court, abandoned to 
their o\^ti proper shame and misery, scorned even by the 
vilest company, objects of censure and contempt to king 
and people, reduced to such a state of degradation as 
to be not worth correction or reproof " — and then he 
names several characters who had been thus " buried in 
the slime." It now rested with Orleans himself, his 
mentor concludes, " to choose once and for all his life one 
of these two states — so dilferent — lying ready to his 
hands, since, after so many wasted years, another step 
on the downward road would seal the stone of the sepul- 
chre where he would be immured alive, and whence no 
human aid could possibly draw him forth." And then, 
with a reference to the "prodigious mischief which 
would be caused to the State by the loss of a prince of 
his rank, of his age, and of his talents," Saint Simon 
brings his long harangue to a close. 



92 SAINT SIMON. 

Orleans was so profoundly moved, as well he might 
he, hy this " terrihle after-dinner scene," that he sought 
an interview the same evening with Madame de Main- 
tenon, who, to his intense surprise, told him precisely 
what Saint Simon had told him, — "even in the same 
phrases and same arrangement of sentences." He was 
inclined to suspect that his friend was in collusion 
with "that woman," as he called her; but after all, 
as Marshal Eesons, who was present at the interview, 
observed, there was nothing so very strange in this co- 
incidence, for truth must be always the same, whether 
it came from the lips of Saint Simon or of Madame de 
Mamtenon. 

Then Orleans had an audience of the king, but Louis 
had received the poor prince's expressions of penitence 
with so cold and stern an air, that Orleans returned 
from the interview in a state of despair, which alarmed 
his two friends. " He threw himself on a sofa, and 
sometimes stupefied, sometimes cruelly agitated, only 
expressed his feelings by an appalling silence, or by a 
torrent of sighs, sobs, and tears, while we were ourselves 
agitated and excited by such a violent paroxysm, and 
restrained our joy, and did not dare to sj)eak, and could 
with difficulty persuade ourselves that this connection 
had been so fortunately broken off." A few days after- 
wards Madame d'Argenton left the Palais Eoyal, and we 
hear the last of her. 

Saint Simon now thought it would be a good time to 
make his own peace if possible with Louis, and he accord- 
ingly requested a private audience in that precious half- 
hour between his Majesty's toilet and morning Mass, 
when he made what we should now call "a personal 



HIS POSITION. 93 

explanation." At first Louis listened with a haughty 
air of attention, " which gradually softened into a more 
open expression of kindness and satisfaction," as Saint 
Simon pleaded his cause with his usual fervid eloquence ; 
and the interview ended by the king, " with a fatherly 
air," giving him some good-humoured advice, not to 
talk so much, nor to be so keen on questions of rank, 
and so to avoid making personal enemies : then he dis- 
missed him with a smiling and gracious bow. 

From this time Saint Simon's position at Court seems 
to have improved. Previously he had not even had a 
room at Versailles that he could call his own. That 
which he occupied had been lent him by his father-in- 
law, De Lorges. But now a suite of six rooms was allotted 
to him in the new wing near the chapel. Each of these 
rooms had a sort of cabinet at the back ; and one of 
these cabinets was turned into what he calls his " work- 
shop." Here were his books and papers : here in soli- 
tude and silence he could transcribe each evening the 
events of the day, and keep the journal on which his 
Memoirs were founded. Here, too, he could discuss 
future schemes of State policy Avith his friends Chevreuse 
or Beauvilliers without fear of interruption from unwel- 
come visitors ; or hold such private interviews as that 
he has described to us with the king's confessor. 

But his active mind was never at rest. "No sooner 
had he extricated Orleans from his embarrassment, than 
we find him busied in contriving a marriage between 
Orleans's daughter, "Mademoiselle," and the Due de 
Berry — son of Mcnseigneur, and grandson of Louis XIY., 
— a most difiicult task, as these two branches of the royal 
family were scarcely on speaking' terms. Moreover, the 



94 SAINT SIMON. 

Meudon faction had other views for Monseigneur's son. 
But the difficulties only served to excite Saint Simon's 
energies, and he made use of his intimate knowledge of 
the different " cabals " to play one off against the other 
with consummate skill. He was fortunate enough to 
secure the goodwill of the ladies, the Jesuits, and above 
all of Madame de Maintenon, and the king's confessor, 
Pere le Tellier, whose veto would have stopped the whole 
business. Next he had to overcome strong opposition 
on the part of Monseigneur and " the Meudon faction," 
who hated the very name of an alliance with the Orleans 
branch of the Bourbons, and who wished that Monseig- 
neur's son should marry the young daughter of " Madame 
la Duchesse," the head of their own society. At the first 
hint of the marriage projected by Saint Simon, Mon- 
seigneur, mild as he was usually, exploded with anger. 
Furthermore, it was necessary that Orleans should get the 
king's formal consent to the match ; and Orleans was " as 
immovable as a log." It was with the greatest difficulty 
that he could be induced even to write a letter on the 
subject ; and in the end Saint Simon had to write it him- 
self, and Orleans made a fair copy of it. But, even then, 
Orleans kept this precious letter in his pocket a whole 
week without daring to deliver it ; and it was only by 
actually pushing him by the shoulders into the royal 
presence that Saint Simon could induce him to present it. 
But the letter was given, and the king read it carefully 
through twice. In a few days he called Monseigneur, 
and told him, " with the air of a king and father," that 
the marriage must take place ; and Monseigneur "did not 
dare to gainsay the king, for the first time in his life." 
He stammered, hesitated, and at last gave way. Indeed, 



MAREIAGE OF THE DUKE OF BERRY. 95 

after the first moments of disgust, he took the whole 
business easily enough ; and, when Orleans and his wife 
came to call on him, he embraced them warmly, made 
them dine with him, drank their healths repeatedly, and 
appeared to be in the highest state of delight and good- 
humour. 

Antin was the first of the Meudon party who heard 
the news, but, far from betraying the least feeling of 
annoyance, he even went so far as to " applaud the idea 
with that delicate taste of flattery which he had so largely 
at his command, and which cost him so little even in 
the things which annoyed him most." But he at once 
posted off a courier to Madame la Duchesse. The news 
fell upon her like a thunderbolt, and her rage and indig- 
nation were extreme. " I would have given a good deal," 
says Saint Simon, maliciously, "to have been hidden 
behind the tapestry in those first strange moments." 

Saint Simon received nothing but thanks and con- 
gratulations on all sides, and for the time being the 
triumph was complete ; but unluckily, so far as any 
domestic happiness was concerned, or any real union be- 
tween the Bourbon and Orleans branches, this marriage, so 
eagerly and so carefully planned, proved a miserable fail- 
ure. The young Duke of Berry was himself perhaps the 
best of the Bourbons — " the gentlest, most amiable, and 
most compassionate of all men ; " gay and frank with the 
few peoj)le he knew well, but so ignorant of all subjects 
except hunting, that he never ventured to open his 
mouth before strangers, and so afraid of the king that 
he lost his head completely if his Majesty addressed him, 
and would stand " twirling his hat in his hand like a 
child," without being able to articulate an answer. 



96 SAINT SIMON. 

Erom the first he was devotedly attached to his wife, 
and for a little time she seemed to return his affection ; 
but soon she showed her character in its true light. She 
despised her easy and gentle husband, ridiculed his 
piety, outraged and insulted him, and herself carried 
on intrigues that scandalised even the lax morality of 
her own time. " She was a model of all the vices," 
says Saint Simon, " excepting avarice, and was the more 
dangerous as she had art and talent to help her out." 
In pride she even surpassed her mother, the Duchess of 
Orleans, whom the duke always called "Madame Lucifer," 
and " who smiled with pleasure at the compliment." 

"It is an instance," says Saint Simon, " of how in this 
world people work with their heads in a sack, and how 
human prudence and wisdom are sometimes confounded 
by successes which have been reasonably devised, and 
which turn out detestable. . . . We discovered, when 
too late, that we had introduced a Fury, whose only 
thought was how to ruin those who had settled her in 
life, to injure her benefactors, to make her husband and 
her brother-in-law [the Duke of Burgundy] quarrel, and 
to put herself in the power of her enemies, merely because 
they were also the enemies of her natural friends." 

An additional source of annoyance to Saint Simon 
was the appointment of his wife as Lady-in-Waiting 
to this demon in petticoats. It was an honour that 
they Avould both have gladly declined, but they had no 
choice in the matter. IsTot only did the Orleans family 
eagerly desire it — possibly in the hope that Madame de 
Saint Simon's good example might influence this "model 
of all the vices" — but Madame de Maintenon and her 
ladies had also set their hearts on it, and the king him- 



DUCHESS OF BERRY. 97 

self approved higMy of the selection. Orleans had sug- 
gested that Saint Simon might refuse, and Louis was 
rather disquieted by the thought : " Your friend is some- 
times a little eccentric ; but refuse, oh no ! — not when he 
learns it is my desire." 

A few days afterwards the king summoned Saint 
Simon to his cabinet, and after paying him many com- 
pliments, and speaking in the highest terms of his wife — 
" for no man in the world knew how to do this better 
when he chose, and above all when he was offering you 
some bitter pill that he wished you to swallow " — he 
intimated his royal wishes in the matter, and Saint 
Simon did not venture even to hint at disobedience. 

" The king then smiled again more cheerfully, like a man 
who understands you well, and who is relieved at not having 
met with the resistance he had expected, and who is content 
with that sort of liberty which he has found, and which makes 
him better appreciate the sacrifice that he feels has been un- 
dergone, without having his own ears wounded by it. At 
the same time he turned his back to the wall, which he had 
been facing before, a little turned towards me, and in a grave 
and magisterial but elevated voice, said to the company : 
" Madame la Duchesse de Saint Simon is Lady-in- Waiting 
to the future Duchesse de Berry." At once there arose a 
chorus of approval at the choice, and of praises of the lady 
chosen ; and the king, without speaking further, passed on 
to his cabinet at the back." 

It may be noticed here, as in all his other audiences 
recorded by Saint Simon, how thoroughly liOuis is 
master of the situation ; how even this talkative and 
impetuous duke is overawed by the majesty of the 
speaker, and does not give the faintest hint of dissent 
or disapproval; how few and well chosen the royal 

F.c. — X. G 



98 SAINT SIMON. 

words are, and how, as they are spoken, a stillness fills 
the air ("a silence in which you might hear an ant 
walk," says Saint Simon in another passage), followed 
by the hroulialia of the courtiers, the hum of mingled 
applause and curiosity. And it is inijiossible not to be 
struck by the kingliness of Louis, so " bien royale," 
as Sainte Beuve says, even in his slightest actions ; 
the curious thing being, that the very man who person- 
ally disliked the king so intensely, should throughout his 
pages bear unwilling, or perhaj)s unconscious, testimony 
to that commanding and majestic deportment which, 
more than any other of his kingly qualities, gained 
him the title of "Le Grand Monarque." 



99 



CHAPTEE YIII 



JESUITS AND JANSENISTS. 



"With Madame de Maintenon began a new era in French 
history — the reign of the saints, or the " Cabals of the 
Devout," as Saint Simon calls them. The same mania 
for direction that had led her to found Saint Cyr, in- 
duced her also to act the part of "a universal abbess — 
a mother of the Church." It gratified her pride to be 
consulted by theologians and doctors of divinity; to 
correspond with cardinals and bishops ; to have priests 
and abbes waiting in her antechamber. Nothing, again, 
pleased her more than to win some proselyte from another 
creed, or to reclaim some repentant prodigal of the 
Court; and Saint Simon tells us how easily she was 
imposed upon by one Courcillon, whom she nursed 
through an illness, and to whom she would talk and 
read good books for hours at a time, though when she 
left the room this impudent young libertine would take 
her off for the benefit of his friends, and send them into 
fits of laughter by his clever imitation. But then, adds 
Saint Simon, " Madame de Maintenon was always the 
queen of dupes." 

Her own room, with its crucifixes and books of devo- 



100 SAINT SIMON. 

tion and sacred pictures, was more like an oratory than 
a boudoir, and Versailles generally took a tone of gravity 
and sobriety that must have contrasted strangely with 
the dissipation of former days. Louis himself observed 
all the fasts and festivals of the Church, attended Mass, 
and received the Sacrament with the ardour of a new 
convert ; and the courtiers followed his Majesty to chapel, 
and watched him at his prayers, with the same regularity 
that they attended his levee or his promenade. " Eacine 
has surpassed himself," wrote Madame de Sevign^ ; "he 
loves his God as he used to love his mistresses." 

As may be supposed, this outward devotion was often 
the merest pretence, and those who attended Mass the 
most regularly were in many instances the most dissolute 
courtiers. " The profession of a hypocrite," wrote 
Moliere, " had marvellous advantages ; " and a more de- 
testable form of hypocrisy cannot well be conceived 
than that impersonated in " Tartuffe," or in " Onuphre," 
one of the characters of La Bruyere. Saint Simon tells 
us story after story to show how false and hollow the 
fashionable religion was in reality : the two gay old 
ladies who relieved their consciences by making their 
servants fast ; Orleans reading a black-covered volume 
at Mass, with an appearance of great devotion, but which 
proved to be Eabelais instead of a breviary ; Madame 
de Maintenon's bosom friend, the Princess of Harcourt, 
discovered playing cards when she ought to have been 
at Vespers ; Madame de Roncy, who communicated every 
week, " but had the most evil tongue " at Court ; M. 
d'O, " who had such an air of sanctity and such austerity 
of manners that one was tempted to cut his cloak in 
pieces from behind" {i.e., make phylacteries of it). Eut 



DEVOUT LADIES. 101 

none of his stories is more characteristic of the time than 
the practical joke played by Brissac upon these zealous 
frequenters of the royal chapel. 

"Brissac, Captain of the Guard, was an honest fellow, 
who could not endure what was false. He had seen with 
impatience all the seats in the chapel lined with ladies at 
evening service on Thursdays and Sundays during the 
winter, because they knew the king never missed attending 
himself ; but if they knew early enough that the king was 
not coming, not a soul was to be seen there. On the pre- 
tence of reading their breviaries, they all had little candle- 
sticks in front of them, so as to let their faces be seen and 
recognised. 

" One evening, when the king was expected to come to 
service, and the usual preliminary prayer had been read, and 
the Guards were at their posts, and the ladies all arranged 
in their places, Brissac comes in, just as the prayer is over, 
raises his baton, and gives his orders in a loud voice : ' Gentle- 
men of the Royal Guard, retire and withdraw to your quar- 
ters ; his Majesty is not coming this evening.' 

"As soon as the Guards had obeyed, there was whispering 
among the ladies in a low tone ; the little candles were ex- 
tinguished ; and off they all went except Madame de Dangeau 
and a few others, who remained. Brissac had placed oiticers 
at some of the doorways leading from the chapel, who ordered 
the Guards to take up their posts again, as soon as the ladies 
were far enough off for there to be no doubt of their de- 
parture. 

" Presently the king arrived, and, greatly astonished at see- 
ing no ladies in the galleries, he inquired how it happened 
there was no one there. As they were leaving the chapel, 
Brissac told him what he had done, and expatiated on the 
piety of the ladies of the Court, The king laughed heartily 
at the trick, and so did all those with him. The story 
soon got about, and all the ladies would have liked to have 
strangled Brissac." 



102 SAINT SIMON. 

Again, if the following anecdote is true, this mock 
devotion was often accompanied hy an ignorance worthy 
of the dark ages of Christianity. Count Grammont was 
one of the greatest wits and finest gentlemen of his day. 

" Being seriously ill at the age of eighty-four, a year before 
his death, his wife spoke to him of God. The utter forget- 
fulness in which he had lived all his life threw him into a 
strange sort of surprise at the mysteries revealed to him. At 
last, turning to her — ' But now, Countess,' he asked, ' are 
you telling me the very truth 1 ' Then, hearing her read the 
Lord's Prayer, — ' Countess,' said he again to her, ' this 
prayer is beautiful. Who composed it 1 ' He had not the 
least particle of any religion." 

The Jesuits, by all accounts, seem to have been 
responsible for much of this inconsistency between pro- 
fession and practice. With them religion took its mosi 
attractive form, and could be associated with aU that 
made life pleasant — with wine and love, with gay dresses 
and sumptuous living. Falsehood, murder, and adul- 
tery were no longer the deadly sins that had been 
supposed; pardon could be obtained, and indulgences 
might be bought, if recourse was had to a Jesuit con- 
fessor. With a Jesuit at hand, the most hardened 
sinner had no occasion to despair — "for," says Saint 
Simon, "they deceive him, from motives of worldly 
policy, up to the brink of the tomb, and conduct him 
to it in profound peace along a path strewn with 
flowers." 

" Masters of the Court, through their position as confessors 
to nearly all the kings and catholic sovereigns ; masters of 
almost every state through their instruction of youth, their 



JESUITS. 103 

talents, and their diplomacy ; necessary to Eome, in order 
to insinuate her pretensions over the temporal power of 
sovereigns, and her supremacy over all things spiritual, so 
as to annihilate the episcopate and general councils ; for- 
midable from their power and their wealth, entirely devoted 
to the purposes of their Order ; carrying authority by their 
multifarious knowledge, and by ever}'- art of insinuation ; 
winning men's affections by an easiness and a tact {tour) 
which had never yet been met with at the confessional, and 
protected by Rome as being especially devoted to the Pope 
by a fourth vow, peculiar to their society, and more pecu- 
liarly fitted than any other class to extend his supreme 
dominion ; in other respects, recommending themselves by 
the austerity of a life entirely consecrated to study and the 
defence of the Church against heretics, as well as by the 
sanctity of their early Fathers : lastly, terrible by a policy 
the most refined and the most profound, which postponed 
every other earthly consideration to that of power, and 
sustained by an internal government in which absolute 
authority, subordination of rank, secrecy, expediency, uni- 
formity in views, and multiplicity of means — were the in- 
spiring principles." 

It was not long, says Saint Simon, before Madame de 
Maintenon's religions zeal began to take a more active 
form. She persuaded the king that the conversion of the 
Protestants would put the coping-stone on the glories of 
his reign, — that he might thus vindicate his title of Most 
Christian Majesty, and prove a second Theodosius or 
Constantine. After various enactments increasing in 
severity, the famous Edict of jSTantes, by which Henry 
rV. had insured safety and toleration to his Protestant 
suhjects, was formally revoked in 1693 ; and then began 
that persecution " which was not to cost a drop of blood," 
and which was made infamous by what were known in 
history as "the Dragonnades of Louyois." 



104 SAINT SIMON. 

" This friglitful plot," says Saint Simon, " depopulated a 
quarter of the kingdom, ruined its commerce, enfeebled it 
in every part, gave it up for years to the open and avowed 
pillage of the soldiery, authorised torments and punishments 
in which many innocent persons of both sexes died in reality 
by thousands, ruined a host of people, tore asunder a world 
of families, armed relations against relations, to seize their 
goods and leave them to die of hunger, made our manufac- 
tures pass to strangers, and caused their commonwealths to 
flourish and overflow at the expense of ours." ^ 

Pere la Chaise had been the king's confessor for more 
than thirty years, and Saint Simon speaks warmly of his 
gentle and liberal character. All his influence — so far 
as it could be exercised — seems to have been for good. 
He befriended Fenelon in his exile ; he did his best to 
shelter the fugitives of Port Royal ; and he scandalised 
his orthodox friends by keeping on his table a copy 
of a Jansenist commentary on the Gospels, explaining 
that he liked good wherever he found it. Feeling the 
infirmities of age creeping on him (for he was now more 
than eighty), the old man had several times petitioned 
to be allowed to give up his duties ; but Louis would 
not hear of it, and to the last Pere la Chaise continued 
to absolve his royal penitent, though his own memory 
had failed, and his mind wandered. Shortly before his 

1 These barbarities do not seem to have offended the public opinion 
of the day, for we find Madame de Sevigne writing in tlie pleasantest 
way possible from her country-house in Brittany : "Oh no, we are 
not so dull here. Hanging is our amusement just now. They have 
just taken twenty or thirty of these fellows, and are going to throw 
them off." And auain, she says her son-in-law has "just made a 
fatiguing journey to pursue and punish these wretchetl Huguenots, 
who came forth from their holes, and vanished like ghosts to avoid 
extermination." 



VkRE TELLIER. 105 

death, he asked the king as a special favour to choose 
his successor from among the Jesuits, — hinting that un- 
less he did so, "a dangerous blow might be struck, and 
it would not be for the first time." Louis, says Saint 
Simon, "wanted to live," and therefore took good care 
to choose his new confessor from tlie Order of Jesus. 
He selected Pere Tellier — the very opposite in mind, 
manner, and body, of the good, easy Pere la Chaise — 
a kind of arch-Jesuit, regarded with terror even by his 
own brethren, and with something like horror by Saint 
Simon, although from the first Tellier made him friendly 
advances, and, as we shall see, asked his advice and 
opinion as to the celebrated " Constitution." 

" The first time that Pere Tellier saw the king in his 
cabinet after having been presented to him, there were only 
present Bloin (the valet) and Fagon (the doctor) in a corner. 
Fagon, bent double, and leaning on his staff, watched the 
interview closely, as well as the countenance of this new 
personage, with his bowings and scrapings and his answers. 
The king asked him if he was a relation of Messieurs Le 
Tellier (the Chancellor and the Bishop). The good Father 
bowed himself to the dust. ' I, sire,' answered he, ' a rela- 
tive of Messieurs Le Tellier ! I am very far from being that ; 
I am a poor peasant from Lower Normandy, where my father 
was a farmer.' Fagon, who had watched him closely, so as 
not to lose a word, twisted himself up, and made an effort 
to look at Bloin. ' Sir,' said he, pointing to the Jesuit, ' what 
a cursed scoundrel ! ' and shrugging his shoulders, leant again 
upon his staff." 

Saint Simon says he was not far wrong; indeed 
P^re Tellier, as Saint Simon describes him, is almost 
the ideal Jesuit of fiction. Harsh, exacting, laborious — 



106 SAINT SIMON. 

" With a heart and brain of iron, and an enemy of all 
amusement and dissipation ; " false and unscrupulous, with 
" his real character hid under a thousand folds, and owning 
no god but the interests of the Order. . . , He would 
have been a terrible fellow to have met in a dark lane, with 
his cloudy, false, and sinister countenance, and his eyes 
burning with an evil radiance, and squinting in both direc- 
tions." 

To his ascendancy over the mind of Louis, Saint Simon 
attributes the persecution of the Jansenists, w^hose doc- 
trines seem to have been a milder form of Calvinism. 
Jansen's ' Augustinus ' (which contained the famous 
"Five Propositions" condemned by the Pope) insisted 
much on the efficacy and necessity of divine grace, 
vouchsafed only to a few, and obtained only by continual 
prayer. Generally speaking, it was a protest and reaction 
against the insincerity of the religion of the day, and the 
dangerous morality of the Jesuits. Jansen and his fol- 
lowers denounced, both in precept and in practice, the 
whole of that gorgeous ritual by which the Church of 
Eome seeks to make her creed attractive and imposing. 
The music and the incense, the paintings and the images, 
the embroidery and the vestments, were all proscribed. 
When the Jansenist worshipped, the service was to be 
in the simplest and severest style; the Gospel was to 
be read in the vulgar tongue, the Psalms were to be 
chanted, and hymns might be sung, but there was to 
be no " ritual," no High Mass, and no frequent celebra- 
tion of the Sacrament. It was by prayer, by solitude, 
by fasting, by suffering, by humiliation, by all that 
could mortify both soul and body, that nian could alone 
hope to draw near his Maker. 



JANSENISM. 107 

So much of what the Jansenists professed and taught 
seems clear, but notwithstanding, half the world in 
those days appears never to have agreed or understood 
what was exactly imj)lied in Jansenism,^ According to 
Saint Simon, the Jesuits "invented this heresy, which 
had neither founders nor followers," to serve their own 
purpose ; and then induced Louis, who had always 
associated Port Royal with the Fronde, to believe 
Jansenism to be synonymous with treason and impiety, 
and to regard a Jansenist as the avowed enemy of 
social order. That this was Louis's actual impression 
may be gathered from the following story, which Saint 
Simon has told us twice over :— 

" Among those whom the Duke of Orleans wished to be of 
his suite in liis journey [to Spain in 1708], he named Fontper- 
tuis. At this name the king at once put on a severe air, 

" ' How is this, nephew I Fontpertuis, the son of that 
Jansenist — that silly woman who ran everywhere after M. 
Arnauld ! I could not think of allowing a man of that sort 
to go with you.' 

" ' By my faith, Sire,' answered the Duke, ' I don't know 
what the mother has done ! bat as for the son, he has taken 
good care not to be a Jansenist, I will answer for that, for 
he does not even believe in God.' 

" ' Is it possible ? ' replied the king, recovering his good- 
humour. 

'' ' Nothing more certain, Sire, I can assure you,' replied the 
Duke. 



1 Even now, many orthodox Catholics suppose that the Jansenists 
were Socinians, Calvinists, bastard Lutherans ; and one writer couples 
Jansen with Mahomet, and boldly pronounces a Jansenist to be "a 
worshipper of Satan" — Histoire universelle de I'Eglise catholique, 
xiii. 295. 



108 SAINT SIMON. 

" ' Since that is so,' said the king, ' there is no harm in 
him. You may take him with you.' 

" This scene (for one can call it by no other name) took place 
in the morning, and the Duke of Orleans told it me after 
dinner the same day, almost dying with laughter, word for 
word, just as I have written it down. After we had both of 
us laughed heartily at it, we admired the profound learning 
of a devout and religious king." 

The story went the round of the Court, and every one 
laughed at it, — although, says Saint Simon, some of the 
more thoughtful courtiers were more inclined to weep 
than laugh over such ignorance, coupled with such 
bigotry, in the person of " his Most Christian Majesty." 

Rightly or wrongly. Port Royal had been always re- 
garded as the headquarters of Jansenism, and the Jesuits 
had determined on its destruction. The story of these 
" solitary and illustrious saints " (to use Saint Simon's 
words) — of Arnauld and Le Maistre, of Saint Cyran 
and La M^re Angelique, of Pascal and the famous 
" Letters," in which he appealed to the world against 
the dogmatists of his day — of the closing of the mon- 
astery and the dispersion of the recluses, — all this has 
been fully told in another volume of this series.^ 

Of Port Royal itself, in 1701, nothing was left but 
a ruined chapel and graveyard, and a convent where 
twenty -two aged nuns still lingered on, whom Louis 
himself would willingly have left alone to die there in 
peace. His surgeon, Marechal, had been deeply im- 
pressed by the patience and piety of these holy women, 
and his report had strongly influenced his master. But 
the terrible Pere Tellier had resolved on their disper- 

1 '■ Pascal," by Principal Tulloch. 



PORT ROYAL. 109 

sion. Feeling their case was hopeless with the Jesuits 
against them, the unfortunate nuns appealed to Rome, 
but the Pope only responded by a bull which ordered 
that " this nest of heresy should be uprooted from its 
foundations," and the Cardinal de I^oailles had no alter- 
native but to enforce the papal mandate. 

In the autumn of 1709 Port Royal was surrounded 
by a body of archers under Argenson, lieutenant of the 
police ; the nuns were summoned to the chapter-house ; 
the royal commission was read to them, and then they 
were hurried into carriages, and each of them carried off 
to a different convent. Tjie parting scene between these 
aged sisters, many of them sick and infirm — their tears, 
their misery, their agonising farewells — moved even the 
rough archers of the Guard to pity. 

But even this dispersion of the nuns did not satisfy 
the Jesuits. There still remained the graveyard — " the 
necropolis of Jansenism " — where the ashes of three thou- 
sand recluses of Port Royal reposed in what might have 
been thought consecrated ground. It was ordered that the 
bodies should be exhumed, and the graveyard ploughed 
up, and a gang of workmen were sent down for the pur- 
pose. For two months they continued their odious task, 
and their horrible profanity excited the deepest resent- 
ment among the relatives and descendants of those whose 
graves were thus shamefully violated. After the bodies 
had been removed, the plough was passed over the burial- 
ground, and the church and cloisters were destroyed so 
completely that not one stone was left upon another. 

Innocent XII. had died in 1700 — "a great and holy 
Pope," says Saint Simon ; " a true pastor and common 
father of the Church, such as one rarely sees in Saint 



110 SAINT SIMON. 

Peter's chair." He was succeeded by Clement XI., as 
weak as he was amiable, who gave way to the pressure 
brought to bear on him by the Jesuits. After various 
refusals and delays, he at length published the cele- 
brated bull Unigenitus, which condemned a hundred and 
one propositions contained in Pere Quesnil's commentary 
on the Gospels, which, on its first appearance, some 
thirty years previously, had been quoted and admired by 
orthodox Catholics.^ The " Constitution," as the bull 
was called, was received both at Eome and in France 
with indignation and alarm " by all," says Saint Simon, 
" excepting those who were enslaved to the Jesuits — 
that is to say, by honest people in every class of life." 
The cardinals protested against it ; many of the bishops 
refused to recognise it; the doctors of the Sorbonne 
denounced its terms ; and though the Parliament ratified 
it, as being " by order of the king," it was with sullen 
murmurs of disapproval. Every one wondered how the 
Pope could have been induced to pass such a sweeping 
sentence of condemnation on recognised authorities, and 
this is the explanation that Saint Simon had from 
Amelot, who had been sent as a special envoy to Rome 
on this occasion : — 

" He told me that the Pope had taken a liking to him, and 
often spoke to him in confidence, groaning over the straits 
in which he found himself, and over his powerlessness to do 
as he pleased. In one of these conversations the Pope 
opened his heart on his regret at having ever allowed himself 
to publish the " Constitution ; " that it was the king's letters 
that had extracted it from him, and those of Pere Tellier; 

1 See p. 104. 



AMELOT AND THE POPE. Ill 

. . , and that if he had expected a hundredth part of the 
opposition he had met with, he would never have given his 
consent to the measure. 

" Thereupon, Amelot frankly asked him why, if this was so, 
and he wanted to publish a bull at all, he had not contented 
himself with censuring a few of the propositions in Pere 
Quesnel's book, instead of making a clean sweep of a hundred 
and one propositions. Then the Pope cried out and began 
to weep, and, seizing him by the arm, said thus in Italian : 
' Ah, Monsieur Amelot, Monsieur Amelot ! what would 
you have had me do? I fought inch by inch to get rid of 
some of them ; but Pere Tellier had told the king that there 
was in this book more than a hundred propositions deserving 
censure ; he did not wish to pass for a liar, and his party 
held me down by the throat until they made me condenm 
more than a hundred, to show that he had spoken the truth, 
and I have only put one more in the hull ! See, see. Monsieur 
Amelot ! how could I have acted otherwise V " 

Whether this pitiable confession of weakness on the 
part of Clement XI. is true or not, there is no doubt as 
to the pressure put upon him by the Jesuits, nor as to 
the persecution employed to enforce submission to the 
"Constitution." All who refused to agree to its clauses- 
were " tenus pour susjjects,'^ and, as before, hundreds of 
innocent persons were imprisoned or sent into exile. 
No class felt safe from attack when such men as Rollin, 
Fontenelle, and La Chapelle were arrested by the police. 
Poor students of theology, inoffensive merchants, sisters 
of charity, were among the first victims. Even at Ver- 
sailles the sense of insecurity was so general, that 
Madame de Saint Simon warned her husband not to talk 
too loudly about the " Constitution," or he would inevi- 
tably find himself in the Bastille. 

The Jesuits were triumphant for the time, and Pere 



112 SAINT SIMON. 

Tellier found means to reward such of his satellites as 
had been most active in procuring this condemnation of 
Jansenism, and thereby advancing " the greater glory of 
Grod," as well as of their Order. A pension was given 
to Lerouge ; Rohan and Polignac each received a rich 
preferment, and Bissy got a cardinal's hat. It was even 
proposed to establish the Inquisition in France ; and one 
Jesuit (Lallemand) enlarged on its merits to the Marshal 
d'Estrees. "The Marshal," says Saint Simon, "let him 
talk on a little while, and then, the fire mounting to his 
face, he cut him short by telling him that, if it was not 
out of respect for the house where they were (the Abbey 
of Saint Germain du Pre), he would have thrown him out 
of the window." Fifteen years afterwards, in 1732, 
another Jesuit (P. du Halde) made a similar proposal to 
Saint Simon. " I took him up," he says, " in such a 
rough fashion, that all his life afterwards he never dared 
to speak of it again to me." 

The Protestants did not escape a second persecution, 
any more than the Jansenists. In 1712 a new edict 
was passed against them. Those who would not con- 
form to the Catholic faith were no longer allowed to 
practise their simple worship in caves and desert places 
as heretofore, but were pursued and apprehended by the 
police and soldiers. The men were sent to the galleys ; 
the women were imprisoned ; and their pastors, if they 
were found officiating, were hung in chains by the road- 
side. The tale of their wrongs and sufferings has been 
so often and so pathetically told, that there is no need 
for dwelling upon it here. It is the blackest spot in the 
history of the time, and Saint Simon's indignant denun- 
ciation of the authors and instigators of this barbarous 



PERSECUTION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 113 

policy is only a faint echo of the deep and passionate 
resentment that it roused both in Paris and the pro- 
vinces. One has only to turn to the caricatures and 
pasquinades of the day to find abundant proofs that in 
this respect he has not exaggerated the intensity of 
popular feeling. Whether he is right in ascribing this 
policy, as he does, to the sinister influence of Madame de 
Maintenon, is another question. After all, he says, she 
was herself "the dupe of her own hypocrisy," and a 
mere puppet in the hands of the Jesuits. 

" She believed herself the prophetess who should save the 
people of God from error, from revolt, and from impiety. 
It was in this belief, with which Bissy^ inspired her, that she 
excited the king to all the horrors, all the violences, all the 
acts of t3^ranny then practised upon men's consciences, upon 
their fortunes and their persons, and which filled the prisons 
and dungeons. Bissy suggested and obtained all he wished. 

" The barbarous measures taken with the Huguenots after 
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes were on a large scale 
the model of those now taken with all who would not agree 
to the 'Constitution.' Hence arose the innumerable artifices 
used to intimidate and gain over the bishops, the schools, 
and the lower clergy ; hence came that vast and ceaseless 
storm of lettres de cachet, that struggle with the Parliament, 
that total denial of public and private justice, that open 
inquisition and persecution even reaching to simple laymen 
— a whole people exiled or shut up in prisons ; and lastly, the 
inexhaustible devils' broth {pot au noir), to besmear all whom 
the Jesuits would, . . . and that countless throng of 
persons of every age and every sex exposed to the same 
trials of faith as those endured by the Christians under the 
Arian emperors, and, above all, under Julian the Apostate." 



1 Bissy succeeded Bossuet as Bishop of Meaux. 
F.C. X. H 



114 SAINT SIMON. 

It is curious, after reading this tirade, to find Saint 
Simon in another passage complacently saying that he 
had always been on good terms with the Jesuits, and 
was looked upon by them as a friend and supporter of 
their interests. But the fact is, that he was himself op- 
pressed and almost terrified by the illimitable power of 
the Jesuits in that age ; and, so far as it was possible in 
him to play the courtier, he certainly paid court to what 
he felt to be the strongest body in the kingdom. Yet, 
while he was ostensibly Pere Tellier's excellent friend, 
— while he even opposed the proposition of his colleague 
ISToailles to expel the Jesuits "bag and baggage" from 
France — ^he has not scrupled to describe, in the strongest 
language at his command, the deadly tendencies of their 
doctrines ; and at one of his secret interviews with Pere 
Tellier, he plainly denounced some of the clauses of the 
bull Unigenitus as revolutionary, and dangerous to the 
very existence of a monarchy. 

"This short statement of mine exasperated the Jesuit, be- 
cause it hit the right nail on the head, in spite of all his 
cavilling and equivocation. AH the time he avoided saying 
anything personally ofi'ensive, but he fumed with rage, and 
... in his furious passion, being no longer master of him- 
self, many things escaped him which I feel sure he would 
afterwards have paid Yevj dearly to have left in silence. He 
told me so much of the extremities and the violence that 
would be used to make the ' Constitution ' accepted — things 
so enormous, so atrocious, so frightful, and all with such 
furious passion — that T fell into a veritable syncope. I saw 
him face to face between two candles, there being only the 
breadth of the table between us — (I have described elsewhere 
his horrible countenance) — and all at once, stupefied both 
in sight and hearing, I comprehended, M'hile he was speak- 



SAINT SIMONS INTERVIEW WITH PERE TELLIKR. 115 

ing, all that was implied in a Jesuit, — a man who, by his 
personal annihilation, and bound by the vows of his Order, 
could hope for nothing for his family or for himself — not 
even an apple or a glass of water more than his brethren, — 
who was so old as to be even then drawing near the time 
when he must give an account to God, and yet with deliber- 
ate purpose, and with studied artifice, was about to throw 
State and Church into the most terrific conflagration, and 
begin the most frightful persecution for questions that mat- 
tered not a jot to him, nor touched in any degree the honour 
of the school of Molina. 

" His deep and dark designs, and the violence that he 
showed, so bewildered and confounded me, that I suddenly 
interrupted him and said, ' My father, how old are you ? ' 
The extreme surprise (for I was looking at him with all 
my eyes) that I saw painted on his face recalled me to my 
senses, and his answer completely restored me to myself. 
* Eh ! why do you ask me that ? ' said he, smiling. The 
effort that I made to avoid this fearful dilemma, of which 
I felt all the terrible importance, furnished me with a way 
of escape. 'It is because,' said I, 'I have never looked at 
you so long as I have now, face to face and between these 
two candles, and you have such a fine healthy countenance, 
with all your labours, that I am perfectly surprised at it.' 

'' He swallowed the answer — or at least made such a good 
pretence of doing so, that he said nothing of it at the time 
or since, and never ceased to speak to me as often as he had 
done before, and with the same openness, although I sought 
his company less than ever. He told me that he was seventy- 
four years of age ; that, as a matter of fact, he was in excel- 
lent health, and had accustomed himself to toil and hardship 
all his life. And then he took up the conversation again at 
the point where 1 had interrupted him." 

Saint Simon's own religions views (although he is not 
always consistent in the matter) are pretty much what 
we might expect from his shrewd yet earnest character. 



116 SAINT SIMON. 

He tells us frankly that he was himself "?^^ docte ni 
docteur; " that he had neither the time nor inclination 
to trouble himself about vexed questions of theology ; 
that he had put himself in the hands of La Trappe, his 
spiritual adviser ; and that La Trappe had warned him 
that Jansenism was a deadly heresy, — that there was 
neither charity, nor peace, nor truth in its tenets, and 
that it was dangerous alike to Church and State. 

But if he was not a Jansenist, still less was he a 
Jesuit or an Ultramontane. He was warmly attached 
to the Gallican Church, and thought it had done good 
service in defending its liberties against the "aggres- 
sions and usurpations of the Court of Rome." He 
recognised in the Pope " the chief of the Church, the 
successor of Saint Peter, the first bishop, but very far 
from being infallible, in whatever sense one takes the 
words." In fact, his view of the papal supremacy is 
that of a moderate Catholic but not of an Ultramon- 
tane ; and it is clear that anything like bigotry or intol- 
erance, especially in the form of persecution, was abhor- 
rent to his whole nature. 

He passed a week or more every Easter at the monas- 
tery of La Trappe, only a few miles from his own country- 
house. The Abbot had been a distinguished soldier in 
the Fronde, but had retired from the world (it was said 
from disappointed love), and had for some thirty years 
led a life of penance and seclusion that seemed to have 
reached the limits of asceticism. Saint Simon always 
speaks of him with the profoundest veneration, and his 
affection was evidently returned. " He loved me as a 
father," he says, " and I loved him as a son." 

So attached was he to the Abbot of La Trappe, and 



LA THAPPE. 117 

SO anxious to have some memorial of him, that he got 
Eigault to paint his portrait from memory, and the like- 
ness was pronounced admirable. The fact of the picture 
having been taken at all was to have been kept a pro- 
found secret, but Rigault could not resist the temptation 
of making money by painting copies of it, and Saint 
Simon had to confess the trick he had played upon his 
confessor. La Trappe was much vexed, though he for- 
gave the culprit. " I hate treason, but I love the traitor," 
was his way of condoning the offence. When he died, 
Saint Simon's grief was intense. " These Memoirs," he 
says, "are too profane to recall anything here of a life 
so sublimely holy, and of a death so grand and so 
precious in the sight of God. . . . All Europe felt 
his loss acutely ; the Church wept for him ; and even 
the world did him justice." 

^NText to La Trappe, Saint Simon had more sympathy 
perhaps with Fenelon than with any other prelate of the 
day, although he has discovered a strain of worldliness 
in Fenelon's character which his other biographers have 
passed over or ignored. His piety, he says, was "of 
that insinuating kind which is all things to all men : " 
his ambition had led him "to knock at all doors," and 
to pass from the Jesuits over to the Jansenists ; but 
being "too subtle" (tropfin) for the latter, he had halted 
half-way with the Sulpicians, and made himself a reputa- 
tion for his " penetrating genius " and courtly manners. 
Then Bossuet had taken him up ; Beauvilliers was fas- 
cinated by him ; he was appointed tutor to the young 
Duke of Burgundy, and all would have gone well with 
him at Court had he not, in an evil hour for hunself, 
made Madame Guyon's acquaintance. Fenelon, whose 



118 SAINT SIMON. 

imagination was easily touched, was cliarmed with this 
young prophetess. " Their spirituality amalgamated," 
says Saint Simon. He introduced her at Versailles, and 
Madame de Maintenon herself was among the distin- 
guished converts attracted by this new phase of mys- 
ticism. Delightful little dinner - parties took place, 
when the guests interchanged spiritual confidences, and 
all "with a secrecy and mystery that gave additional 
flavour to this precious manna." Madame Guy on even 
made her way into Saint Cyr, and the young girls there 
(as may be supposed) eagerly welcomed anything that 
relieved the monotony of their lives ; indeed, they seem 
to have occasionally dreamed dreams and seen visions 
when they ought to have been engaged in their studies 
or household work. 

Unfortunately both for Fenelon and Madame Guyon, 
Godet, the Bishop of Chartres — a stern divine, who had 
little sympathy with enthusiasm in any shape — dis- 
covered the dangerous tendencies of these new doctrines ; 
and Bossuet, whom he consulted, took the same view. 
Madame de Maintenon was startled and indignant to 
find that " she had been led to the verge of a precipice," 
and at once repudiated her friends. Madame Guyon 
was banished from Saint Cyr, and soon afterwards sent 
to the Bastnie. 

Fenelon, who to the last regarded this enthusiast as 
a persecuted saint, wished apparently to justify both her 
and himself, if it was possible, and wrote a book on 
the history of mysticism, called ' Maxims of the Saints.' 
This book, according to Saint Simon, was quite unin- 
telligible " except to the Masters of Israel ; " and those 
theologians who could understand it agreed that it was 



FENELON. 119 

" pure and refined Quietism, disguised under a bar- 
barous language." Its publication only increased the 
prejudice against Fenelon at Court ; and Bossuet soon 
afterwards wrote two volumes in reply — " clear, sbort, 
concise, and supported by countless references from Holy 
Scripture, the Fathers, and the Councils ; " and we are 
told that it was " received and devoured with avidity." 

Fenelon's book was condemned by a commission of 
bishops. He was banished from Court to his diocese ; 
Louis with his own hand crossed his name off the list of 
the royal household, and all who knew the king knew 
that, while he lived, the sentence was irrevocable. 
Almost immediately afterwards his book was placed by 
the Pope on the Index Expitrgatorius ; and whoever was 
found reading it, or even having it in his possession, was 
threatened with excommunication. The news of this 
last blow reached Fenelon just as he was mounting the 
pulpit in his church at Cambray. He at once laid aside 
his prepared sermon, and preached extempore on the 
duty of submission to the powers that be. He had still 
influential supporters among the Jesuits, and his friends 
hoped that such prompt obedience might have made his 
peace both with the king and the Pope. Eut this was 
not to be. 

" Confined within his diocese, this prelate grew old there 
under the useless burden of his hopes, and saw the years 
glide by with a sameness (egaliU) that could not but make 
him despair. Always hateful to the king, to whom no one 
dared mention his name even on indifferent subjects — more 
hateful still to Madame de Maintenon because she had ruined 
him — more exposed than any other to that terrible cabal 
which ruled over Monseigneur — he had no resource except 



120 SAINT SIMON. 

in the unchangeable affection of his pupil [the Duke of Bur- 
gundy], himself a victim of this cabal. . . . Then in the 
twinkling of an eye the pupil becomes the Dauphin, and in 
another moment, as one will see, he is raised to a kind of 
viceroy alty (avant-regne). What a change of fortune for a 
man of Fenelon's ambitious character ! " 

Saint Simon dwells at some length, and in more than 
one passage, upon Fenelon's peaceful and laborious life 
in his diocese, his charity to the poor, his visits to the 
hospitals, his grand hospitality, his kindness to the 
clergy, his urbanity and courtly manners ; but he hints 
that, though occupied by his pastoral duties, and though 
delighting in his books and his flowers — the best com- 
panions of solitude — he still cast a longing eye to Ver- 
sailles, to his young " Telemachus," and to the little 
band of friends, such as Beauvilliers and Chevreuse, who 
had never forgotten him during the twelve years of his 
exile. They still corresponded with him incessantly, 
and made him the confidant of their hopes and schemes 
for the future. They received his advice " as though 
his words were the oracles of God." They never ceased, 
as they assured him, " to talk of him, to regret him, to 
long for his return, to cling closer and closer to his 
memory, as the Jews clung to Jerusalem of old, and to 
sigh and hope always for his coming again, as that un- 
happy race still waits for and sighs after the Messiah." 

How sadly their hopes were dissipated by the sudden 
death of the young Dauphin wall be told in another 
chapter. Fenelon and his pupil only lived to meet once 
again — when the latter was on his way to join the army 
in Flanders in 1708, and his route lay through Cambray. 
The prince threw himself upon Fenelon's neck, and if 



FENELON. 121 

words were wanting, says Saint Simon, " the fire from his 
looks, darting into the eyes of the archbishop, supplied 
all that the king had forbidden him to say, and was an 
eloquence that carried away the spectators." But this 
was the last and only interview between " Mentor" and 
" Telemachus." 

Fenelon survived the Dauphin some four years, 
and, " even after so many losses and trials, this pre- 
late was still a man of hopes." Orleans had declared 
that, if he became Regent, his first step would be to 
recall him from banishment. But it was too late : 
Fenelon's health, never strong, had been broken by 
incessant labour, by grief, and by disappointment. In 
1715 he lost his life -long friend, the Duke of Beau- 
villiers, and this last blow struck him to the heart. A 
few months later he was himself carried to his last 
resting-place, dying as he had lived, "a model ever- 
present that none could attain to ; in all things a true 
prelate ; in all things also a grand seigneur, and in all 
things still more — the author of ' Telemachus.' " Such is 
his epitaph, as Saint Simon has written it for us ; or, as 
we might put it now, the Christian bishop, the perfect 
gentleman, and the accomplished scholar. Taking him 
all in all, we may search ecclesiastical history far and 
wide before we discover his superior, or even his equal. 



122 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE SPANISH SUCCESSION. 



Saint Simon's warmest admirers must admit that his 
account of the great war that convulsed Europe in the 
last decade of Louis XIY.'s reign is partial and unsatis- 
factory, and it is fortunate, on every ground, that we 
have not to depend upon his history of the campaigns 
that followed the accession of Philip V. to the throne 
of Spain. As it happens, this period is singularly rich 
in contemporary memoirs. We have the despatches of 
Marlborough on one side, and of Vendome and Yillars 
on the other ; we have the letters of such masters of the 
art of war as Berwick and Prince Eugene ; and we have 
the independent opinion of diplomatists like Torcy and 
De Noailles. When collated with such evidence. Saint 
Simon is found to be as often wrong as right. His pre- 
judices and personal dislikes are shown in his account 
of almost every battle ; and while he does full justice to 
the talents of Marlborough, and even pays his tribute to 
William III., the sworn enemy of his country, he cannot 
find a good word to say for the gallant French soldiers 
who were fighting against long odds, dying of hunger in 
their camps, and perishing by thousands on the fields of 
Blenheim and Malplaquet. 



THE SPANISH SUCCESSION 123 

A civilian is rarely a competent critic of the art of 
war, and Saint Simon, in spite of his four campaigns, 
was essentially a politician, and not a soldier. He was 
only present himself at one battle, and of that battle 
(Neerwinden) he has given ns an amateur's account. He 
could paint the details that came under liis own eye, but 
failed utterly to grasp the general plan of action. Like 
a painter who makes his sketch from a particular point 
of view, he brings some one scene or episode into strong 
rehef, but ignores all that does not actually meet his eye. 
Again, writing, as he wrote, from his cabinet at Ver- 
sailles, what could he possibly know of the real circum- 
stances of half of what he tells us ? He was not in the 
confidence of any of the Ministers excepting Chamillart, 
who soon resigned his office ; he rarely saw any of the 
despatches ; he was at deadly feud with most of the 
generals ; there were no bulletins, no " special corre- 
spondents," and private letters were few and far between. 
What he heard was principally the gossip of the back- 
stairs or second-hand reports from second-rate authori- 
ties ; and we may be sure that he eagerly caught at any- 
thing that would glorify his young hero, the Duke of 
Burgundy, or cast discredit on Villars, or Yilleroy, or 
Yendome. 

As is well known, the grand question of succession, 
over which so much blood was subsequently spilt, was 
whether Charles II. 's enormous possessions, " on which 
the sun never set " — Spain, half the Netherlands, Milan, 
Sicily, lN"aples, Mexico, Cuba, and the African colonies 
— were to go to a French or an Austrian prince, to en- 
rich the house of Bourbon or the house of Hapsburg. 
More than one secret treaty had been drawn up between 



124 SAINT SIMON. 

the parties chiefly interested in Charles's death, -which 
divided the Spanish possessions between France and 
Austria, — Louis, of course, getting the lion's share in 
the division. Unfortunately, Charles heard of the 
last treaty concluded at the Hague between Louis and 
William III., and, exasperated at the thought of his 
kingdom being thus dismembered in his own lifetime, 
he drew up a fresh will, by which he left the whole of 
his vast possessions to the Duke of Anjou, the grandson 
of Louis XIV. 

The excitement in Madrid was intense when, shortly 
afterwards, Charles died, and it was known that he had 
made a new will, — for public opinion in Madrid was 
divided between the Bourbons and the house of Haps- 
burg. The Council of State assembled at the palace, and 
the antechambers were thronged by nobles, Spanish 
dignitaries, and by foreign ambassadors, each eager to 
hear the terms of the will, and to inform their Court. 
Among the rest stood Blecourt the French ambassador, 
and Harrach the Austrian envoy, the latter being posted 
close to the door, with an eager and triumphant air. 

" At length the door opened and closed again. The Due 
d'Abrantes, who was a man with plenty of wit and a dan- 
gerous kind of humour, wished to have the pleasure of 
announcing the successor to the throne, as soon as he had 
seen the council agreed. He found himself surrounded the 
moment he showed himself outside. He east his eye round 
him on all sides, still gravely keeping silence. Blecourt 
advanced. D'Abrantes looked at him very intently, and 
then turning his head the other way, seemed as though he 
were seeking for what he had almost in front of him, — an 
action which surprised Blecourt, and made him interpret it 
as of evil augury for France. Then suddenly making as 



THE SPANISH SUCCESSION. 125 

though he had only just perceived the Count d'Harrach for 
the first time, D'Abrantes put on an air of joy, threw him- 
self on his neck, and said to him in Spanish in a loud tone : 
' Sir, it is with the greatest pleasure ' — and making a pause 
in order to embrace him better, he went on — ' Yes, sir, it is 
with extreme joy that for the whole of my life' — and then 
redoubling his embrace, to give himself an excuse for stop- 
ping once more, he finished with — ' and with the greatest 
satisfaction^ that I separate myself from you, and take my 
leave of the most august house of Austria.' And then he 
made his way through the crowd, every one running after 
him to know the name of the real heir. The astonishment 
and indignation of D'llarrach closed his mouth altogether, 
but showed themselves through his face." 

It was not likely that Philip V.'s accession would be 
tamely acquiesced in by the meml)ers of the Grand Al- 
liance, and the emperor declared war at once against 
Trance ; but public opinion was divided in England, and 
for the present that country made no sign. But, in 1701, 
James II. died at St Germains, and, whether out of 
generosity or bravado, or to gratify his hatred against 
William III., Louis publicly recognised the heir of the 
Stuarts as the King of England. " It was a stupidity," 
says Saint Simon, "of which a child would not have 
been guilty." By this folly he turned the English na- 
tion into a personal enemy, and England threw herself 
heart and soul into the war which followed, supplying, 
in proportion to her size, more men and money than any 
other of the allied powers. 

Soon after this, William, who had been long in 
declining health, met with the accident wdjich gave ' the 
last blow to his shattered constitution. He died — " but 
his spirit still continued to animate the Grand Alliance, 



126 SAINT SIMON. 

and his bosom friend Heinsius perpetuated it, and in- 
spired with it all the chiefs of the Eepublic, their allies 
and generals, in such a fashion, that it was scarcely 
apparent that William was no more." France had 
against her the two greatest generals of the age — 
Eugene of Savoy, and Marlborough himself, who, says 
Voltaire, " was more of a king than William, as great a 
statesman, and a far greater general." 

Meanwhile, calamities seemed to thicken around 
France. The campaigns that followed 1702 were a 
succession of blunders and disasters, culminating in 
the crushing defeat at Blenheim, or Hochstedt, as the 
French prefer to call it, where Tallard allowed his 
army to be cut in half, and where 11,000 men, who 
had been cooped up within the walls of the village, 
laid down their arms without striking a blow. Out 
of the army of 60,000 men that had paraded on the 
morning of Blenheim, scarcely 5000 answered the mus- 
ter-roll when Marsin joined Yilleroy a few days after 
the battle. 

The news reached Versailles when it was ablaze with 
illuminations in honour of the birth of a young prince ; 
but the details only transpired by degrees. That there 
had been a great defeat was well known, but the extent 
of the calamity could not even be guessed at. N'either 
despatches nor private letters threw any light on the 
national disaster, for the simple reason that no one dared 
to tell the truth. At last, an officer who had been 
taken prisoner was dismissed on parole by Marlborough 
to bring the news to jMarly, "and," says Saint Simon, 
"one can imagine what was the general consternation, 
when each noble family (without speaking of others) 



VENDOME AND BURGUNDY. 127 

had its dead, its wounded, and its prisoners. We 
trembled in the midst of Alsace." 

Next year Marlborough defeated Yilleroy at Ramil- 
lies, where the battle was decided in half an hour ; the 
French lost six thousand men, and all their guns and 
baggage, while the whole of Flanders lay open to the 
victorious army. Here again Saint Simon attributes the 
defeat entirely to the deplorable blunders of Yilleroy, 
who had posted his raw recruits in the centre, had 
isolated his left wing behind a marsh, and had actually 
placed the baggage- waggons between his front line and 
the reserves. 

Vendome gained some successes in Spain, but these 
were soon neutralised by the disastrous battle of Turin, 
which, says Saint Simon, " cost us all Italy, owing to 
the ambition of La Feuillade, the incapacity of Marsin, 
the avarice, the trickery, the disobedience of the captains 
opposed to the Duke of Orleans." 

In 1708 Vendome again took the field in Flanders, 
but, by a fatal policy, the Duke of Burgundy was 
associated with him in the command ; and this young 
prince, with all his amiable qualities, had no pretension 
to any military talent. Even by Saint Simon's account, 
he seems to have divided his time between hearing Mass, 
playing tennis, and dawdling over mechanical experi- 
ments. " You will win the kingdom of heaven, Mon- 
seigneur," said Gamaches, one of his suite ; " but as for 
the kingdom of earth, Euo^ene and MarlborouGfh take 
more trouble about getting it than you do." The enemy 
was not slow to profit by the division of counsel in the 
French camp, and their forces were concentrated upon 
Oudenarde, where a disastrous battle was followed by 



128 SAINT SIMON. 

an even more disastrous retreat. Saint Hilaire was 
present at the battle, and tells ns how stubbornly the 
French Guardsmen held their ground — how Vendome 
himself seized a pike and charged at the head of his 
grenadiers — and how the household brigade fought like 
lions to retrieve the day — while fifty battalions under 
the Duke of .Burgundy were watching the battle at a 
prudent distance. Saint Simon tells us nothing of all 
this, but says, that when a retreat was proposed at the 
council of war held after the battle, Vendome, "pushed 
as he was to extremities, with rage on his face, and fury 
in his heart," taunted the young prince with his cowardice, 
— an enormous insult, says Saint Simon ; but it must 
be confessed that oui symj)athies are rather with the 
soldier who fought than with the pious and pedantic 
Duke of Burgundy, who looked on ; and Vendome might 
have pleaded in excuse of his rough speech, like Hot- 
spur, that it angered him 

'' To be so pestered with a popinjay." 

It is clear that the feeling at Court ran strongly in 
Vendome's favour, for Saint Simon complains that on 
his return he was almost worshipped " as the hero and 
tutelary genius of France," while for Burgundy there was 
nothing but cold looks and a disdainful silence, even 
from his OMm family. However, if we may trust our 
chronicler, Vendome lost favour as rapidly as he gained 
it, and, thanks to the persevering hostility of the young 
Duchess of Burgundy, was banished from Versailles and 
Marly, and at last from Meudon, — " a triumph equally 
great in the sight of gods and men." 

Not long afterwards, Lille — the strongest fortress in 



THE FALL OF LILLE. 129 

France — succumbed to Eugene after a heroic resistance, 
in wMcli we are told the garrison had been reduced to 
" eat eight hundred horses," and had repelled assault after 
assault. 

" The agitation at Court was extreme, even to indecency. 
The expectation of a decisive battle engrossed us all. The 
happy junction of the two armies [under Vendome and 
Berwick] was regarded as a certain presage of success. 
Each delay increased our impatience ; every one was rest- 
less and uneasy ; the king even demanded news from the 
courtiers, and could not imagine what kept the couriers 
back. The princes and the suite of all the noblemen and 
people of the Court were with the army. Every one at 
Versailles felt the danger of their friends and kinsmen ; 
and the oldest established families saw their fortunes in sus- 
pense. For forty hours prayers were offered everywhere ; the 
Duchess of Burgundy passed the night in the chapel, while 
people believed her in bed, and distracted her ladies by her 
vigils ; and, following her example, all the wives who had 
husbands in the army never stirred from the churches. 
Games, and even conversation, had ceased. Fear was paint- 
ed on every countenance and in every speech in a shameful 
manner. If a horse passed by a little quickly, every one 
rushed to the windows without knowing why. Chamillart's 
rooms were crowded with lackeys, even to the street door, 
for every one wished to be informed the moment a courier 
arrived ; and this agonising suspense lasted a month, until 
a battle put an end to our uncertainty. Paris, being further 
from the source of news, was still more troubled, and the 
provinces to an even greater extent. The king had writ- 
ten to the bishops to offer up public prayers in terms propor- 
tioned to the danger." 

It would perhaps be going too far to say that Saint 
Simon rejoiced in the misfortunes of France; but it is cer- 
tain that he passes very slightly over the French victories, 

F.c. — X. I 



130 SAINT SIMON 

such, as Denain, Almanza, and Villa Yiciosa, while he 
devotes chapter after chapter to the long story of French 
defeats and disasters. An officer who resigns his com- 
mission at the beginning of a war, as in his case, is 
scarcely in a position to malign and disparage the 
efforts of men who are giving their life-blood for their 
country ; and it is impossible not to feel something like 
contempt, when we find Saint Simon dangling about the 
ante-rooms at Versailles, and fulfilling his self-imposed 
mission of spy and reporter, while battles were being 
daily lost and won, and while every prince and noble 
of military age were taking their share of active service 
on the frontiers. As he tells us himself, there was 
scarcely a family about the Court that had not its tale 
of dead and wounded ; yet their intense anxiety for 
news from the seat of war seems to him " indecent ; " 
he can only show his patriotic interest in the campaigns 
by betting on the capture of the most important French 
fortress ; and, sitting at home at his ease, he can find no 
word of generous sympathy for the poor, half-starved, 
half-clothed soldiers, dragged from their homes, "to 
die like flies," as Louville said, by famine and sick- 
ness, as well as by the sword. 

The continued disasters in the war, added to the ter- 
ribly severe winter of 1709, induced Louis to make over- 
tures of peace, and Torcy was sent on a secret mission to 
the Hague. The French king only stipulated that Philip 
should be allowed to keep IS^aples and Sicily, otherwise 
he declared himself ready to surrender anything and 
everything. "But," says St Simon, "his enemies de- 
rided his misery, and negotiated only to mock him." 
Heinsius — the Dutch banker — inspired the allied 



FRENCH PATRIOTISM. 131 

general with something of the persevering enmity 
which he had himself inherited from William of Orange ; 
and the demands made by the AlHes were so exorbitant 
that Louis had no alternative but to reject them. " I 
am a Frenchman as well as a king," he declared, " and 
what tarnishes the glory of France touches me more 
closely than my own interests ; " and then for the first 
time in his life he made a personal appeal to his own sub- 
jects to rise and repel the invaders. " There was but one 
cry," says Saint Simon, " of indignation and vengeance; 
nothing but offers to give all their goods to carry on the 
war, and to undergo extremities, such as they had under- 
gone before, to mark their zeal." To set an example, Louis 
sent his gold plate to be melted down, and most of his 
courtiers imitated their master; and those who could not 
give money gave themselves.^ Peasants, mechanics, poor 
farmers, and broken-down gentlemen, in spite of the 
misery and distress in the provinces, flocked in numbers 
to join the ranks, and Louis would have again taken the 
field in person, had it not been "for the evil genius 
which held him fast in those domestic fetters, whose 
weight he never felt." Prayers were offered up in every 
church throughout the kingdom for the success of the 
French army, and early in the following spring Yillars 
was sent to try his fortune in Flanders at the head of 
110,000 men. 

But that year only saw fresh reverses. Toui'nay, a 
fortress nearly as strong as Lille, was taken, and the 
loss was quickly followed by the defeat at Malplaquet, — 

1 Saint Simon showed characteristic prudence. — " When I saw that 
I was almost the only person at Court still eating off silver, I sent a 
thousand pistoles' worth of it to the Mint, and locked up the rest." 



132 SAINT SIMON. 

the most obstinate and most murderous battle fought 
during the war. The victors lost more men than the 
vanquished, and bivouacked on the field among 25,000 
dead. " The Court had grown so accustomed to defeats," 
says Saint Simon, " that a battle lost, as Malplaquet was, 
seemed half a victory." Yet he will allow Villars no 
credit for his own heroic conduct, or for the good order 
of the retreat. We hear little of the terrible privations 
endured by the survivors of Malplaquet. "There was 
no meat or bread ; the soldiers ate roots and herbs " — 
is all that Saint Simon says of the famine that was 
desolating the camp. Boufflers, we are told, deserved 
half the glory of the campaign, such as it was ; but 
Boufflers was neglected and disgraced, and died of a 
broken heart, while Yillars received honours and rewards 
for victories which had been won by his lieutenants. 
" The name which his invincible good-luck has acquired 
for him for all future time has often disgusted me with 
history," says Saint Simon. He was all ^^ fanfaronnade" 
with " the magnificence of a Gascon, and the greediness 
of a harpy." 

But if Saint Simon is unjust to Yillars, he is still 
more unjust to Yendome, against whom his hatred breaks 
out whenever he mentions his name. He ascribes half 
the misfortunes in the war to his indolence and incapa- 
city, and hints that even his victories were won by his 
troops, almost in spite of himself. But then Yendome 
crossed the arms of France with the bar-sinister ; he was 
closely allied to Monseigneur's faction ; he was himself 
given to wine and riotous living ; his home at Anet was 
Meudon on a grosser scale, or rather an Abbey of Thele- 
ma, where all licence was permitted ; " his Bohemians," 



VENDOME. 133 

as Saint Simon calls his friends, did nothing but drink 
and gamble, and rivalled their patron in ribaldry and 
profanity ; and as for his brother, the Grand Prior, we 
are told that he was " a coward, a liar, a sharper, a 
scoundrel, and a robber;" that he reverenced nothing 
on earth except the "divine bottle," and had been carried 
to bed drunk every night for forty years. 

Vendome's life, no doubt, was scandalous enough, and 
he had a cynical disdain for the proprieties, and even for 
the decencies, of society ; but of his military talents there 
can be no question. Even Eugene acknowledged him as 
a worthy antagonist. He had repaired many of the dis- 
asters both in Elanders and Italy ; he would have saved 
both Lille and Turin, had he not been hampered by a 
divided command, as well as by impracticable orders 
from the Court; and when, in 1711, he was summoned 
to take the command in Spain, his name acted like a 
charm — Spanish enthusiasm revived, soldiers flocked to 
his standard, and in a few months he recovered most of 
the lost ground in the Peninsula. It may be added to 
this that he was idolised by his own troops, and that his 
white plume was to be seen, like that of his grandfather, 
Henry of ISTavarre, in the thickest of the fighting. 

Saint Simon tells us, with an ill-concealed air of tri- 
umph, how miserably Vendome died, soon after his suc- 
cesses in Spain. Always a great epicure, he had retired, 
with a few attendants, to a little hamlet on the Spanish 
coast, and there he gorged himself with fish to such an ex- 
tent that he actually died, like one of our English kings, 
" from a surfeit of lampreys." Every one abandoned 
him in his last moments, and his valets plundered him 
and decamped, taking with them even the mattress and 



134 SAINT SIMON. 

bed-clothes, and leaving their unfortunate master, in spite 
of his piteous entreaties, to die alone on the bare boards. 
As he had deserved so well of Spain, Philip ordered 
his body to be taken to the Escurial — the palace and 
mausoleum of the Spanish kings — where it was walled 
up in one of the outer rooms. When Saint Simon visited 
the spot some years afterwards, he saw the last resting- 
place of his old enemy. " I gently asked the monk in 
charge," he says, " when the body was to be carried into 
the inner room ; but they avoided satisfying my curiosity : 
indeed they showed some irritation, and did not scruple 
to let me understand that they did not think of moving 
it at all, and that, since they had done so much for him. 
as to wall him up there, he might stay there altogether." 

Louis had again made overtures of peace in 1710, and 
sent two ambassadors to a conference at Gertruydenburg 
—one of them being Polignac, the most skilful diplo- 
matist of the day. As before, the French king was ready 
to make all reasonable concessions, but the Dutch de- 
mands were even more insolent than in the previous year. 
Louis must dethrone his grandson, they insisted, by force 
of arms, if persuasion failed. But this humiliation was 
more than Louis could brook. " Since one must make 
war," he said, " it shall be against my enemies, not 
against my children ; " and his ambassadors left Holland, 
appealing " to God and to Europe against the sufferings 
and bloodshed that must follow from the obstiuacy of 
Heinsius and the ambition of Marlborough." 

Saint Simon moralises, after his own fashion, over the 
ignominy of these abortive negotiations, and on the de- 
plorable calamities of the war that was desolating his 
country : — 



PEACE OF UTRECHT. 135 

" Led in this manner up to the very verge of the precipice, 
with a horrible deliberation that gave time to appreciate all 
its depth, that all-powerful hand which has placed a few 
grains of sand as a boundary to the most furious storms of 
the sea, arrested all at once the final destruction of this pre- 
sumptuous and haughty monarch, after having made him 
taste, in long bitter draughts, all his feebleness, his misery, 
and his nothingness. It was some grains of sand of another 
kind — but still grains of sand in then* insignificance — that 
brought to pass this master- work of Providence. A woman's 
quarrel about some trifles in the Court of Queen Anne and 
the intrigue that arose out of it, followed by a vague and 
unformed desire for the success of her own blood, detached 
England from the Grand Alliance." 

The result of this quarrel between Queen Anne and 
her favourite was the disgrace of Marlborough and the 
return of the Tories to office, who at once reversed the 
aggressive policy of the Whigs and " held out a hand to 
France." In 1712, an unknown abbe suddenly presented 
himself before Torcy, charged with a verbal message from 
Bolingbroke. " Are you willing to make peace 1 I bring 
you the means of opening negotiations." It was, said 
Torcy, as if he had asked a dying man if he would like 
to recover his health. The preliminaries were soon set- 
tled, and in 1713 peace was actually concluded at Utrecht. 
This treaty, says Saint Simon, cost Spain half her king- 
dom. Philip retained the Spanish peninsula; but Na- 
ples, Milan, and Flanders were severed from his empire. 
France gave up aU her border fortresses ; and England 
gained l!^ova Scotia and Newfoundland. The following 
year a separate treaty was concluded with the emperor at 
Eastadt ; and thus, at an infinite cost of men and money, 
and after nearly thirty years of incessant w^ar, France 
found herself at last at peace with the nations round her. 



136 



CHAPTEE X. 



THE PROVINCES. 



For the grands seigneurs, as we have seen, life in 
these days flowed on pleasantly and gracefully enough ; 
but there is another side to this brilliant picture — "the 
reverse of the medal," as Saint Simon puts it. At the 
Court all Avas luxury and extravagance, and this while 
five armies were often in the field at once, and while 
Louis was squandering millions on his palace and fetes. 
It cannot but be asked how this enormous drain on 
the wealth of the country was sustained, and how was 
the exchequer able to support the burden of war and 
peace ? It was this question that had baffled every 
Minister of Finance since the time of Colbert, — for he 
alone seems to have realised the simplest axiom of 
political economy, ignored by those who succeeded him 
in office, that the only way of enriching the exchequer 
was by developing to their utmost the productive re- 
sources of the country. It was with this view that 
Colbert had encouraged manufactures, stimulated com- 
merce, and done his utmost to give confidence to Erench 
merchants, and stability to the public credit of French 
bankers. And in this way he had solved the great 



DISTRESS IN THE PROVINCES. 137 

problem of finance, — lie had increased the revenue with- 
out increasing taxation. 

But his successors had neither his genius nor his 
courage. They went back to all the pernicious expe- 
dients of Mazarin to raise money for the war. Every 
office and dignity in the state, from a marquisate to a 
captaincy, had its price, and was sold to the highest 
bidder. " And when these were exhausted, new offices 
and new dignities were created and put up for auction. 
" Sire," said the Minister of the day to Louis, " when 
your Majesty creates a new office, God always creates 
a fool to buy it." Then they issued a large amount 
of paper money, and in consequence the currency was 
depreciated and prices were enhanced. Then they taxed 
every possible commodity — corn, and linen, and hemp, 
and silk ; they placed custom - houses at every cross- 
road, and employed fifty thousand men incessantly in 
collecting these taxes from the wretched peasants. So 
heavy, indeed, were the taxes upon fluids of all kinds 
{elides)^ that while curiosities could be brought across 
the seas from Japan, and sold for only four times their 
value in Paris, a bottle of wine from the French pro- 
vinces cost twenty times its value when it reached the 
Halles. It took three months and a half for the un- 
fortunate wine - seller to pass his casks through the 
countless custom-houses that lined the highroads between 
Paris and Marseilles. In fact, both farmers and vine- 
growers found that it no longer repaid them to cultivate 
the soil. And thus the corn-fields of Languedoc, the 
vineyards of Anjou, the orchards of ISTormandy, were 
left untilled ; and the figs and olives in Provence hung 
rotting on the trees. Prance, from one end to the other, 



138 SAINT SIMON. 

looked like a country that had been wasted by war and 
pestilence. The peasants were seen shivering in rags 
and stripped of all that they possessed, huddled together 
upon straw or roaming through the fields, and flying 
from the presence of the tax-gatherer. After reading 
the terrible chapters in which Saint Simon has described 
their misery, it is easy to appreciate the irony of La 
Bruyere's picture of the same period. 

"One sees certain savage animals, male and female, 
scattered over the country, of a livid hue, scorched and 
blackened by the sun, bound down to the soil which they 
constantly ransack and turn over with invincible obstinacy. 
These creatures have a sort of articulate voice, and when 
they raise themselves on their feet, they show a human face, 
and, in fact, they are — men. At ni<^ht they hide themselves 
in their huts, where they live on black bread, water, and 
roots. They spare other men the trouble of sowing, and 
toiling, and reaping for a livelihood, and it is only reason- 
able that they should not want the bread which they have 
sown." 

But these poor creatures could not even get this 
bread. Wheat was heavily taxed, and was not even 
allowed to pass from one province to another ; the system 
of " monopolies " still further raised the price of corn, 
and while the bakers and Government agents were mak- 
ing fortunes, hundreds of the wretched peasants in the 
provinces were dying of hunger. This distress culmin- 
ated in the winter of 1709, which was ushered in by a 
frost of such unusual severity that Saint Simon tells us 
not only did the Seine become a block of solid ice, but 
even the sea was frozen on the coasts, and carried loaded 
waggons on its surface. Half the olive-trees and vines 
in Trance were killed by the intense frost ; the cattle 



nSTRESS OF THE PEASANTRY. 139 

perished for want of food ; and the peasantry died in 
hundreds of cold, disease, and famine. 

"At the same time the taxes — increased, multiplied, and 
exacted with the extremest severity — completed the deso- 
lation of France. Everything increased in price beyond 
belief, while nothing remained to buy with, even at the 
cheapest rate. 

" People did not cease wondering what could have become 
of all the money in the kingdom. No one could pay any 
longer, because no one got paid himself. The country 
people, owing to excessive taxation and bankrupt estates, had 
themselves become insolvent. Though all trade was taxed, 
it no longer yielded any profit ; while public credit and 
confidence had completely disappeared. Thus the king had 
no resource except the terror and the custom of his boundless 
power, though even this, all illimitable as it was, itself 
failed for want of victims to seize and persecute. He no longer 
even paid his troops, — though, unless he did so, it is im- 
possible to conceive what became of the countless millions 
that poured into his treasury. 

" Such was the fearful state to which all France was 
reduced, when our ambassadors were sent into Holland [to 
negotiate a peace]. This picture is accurate, faithful, and 
not the least overdrawn. It was necessary to give it in 
its true colours, to explain the dire extremity to which we 
were reduced, the enormity of the concessions which the 
king allowed himself to make to obtain peace, and the visible 
miracle of Him who puts bounds upon the sea, and who 
calls things which are not to be as things which are, — by 
which He delivered France from the hands of Europe, ready 
and resolved to destroy her." 

After reading these terrible chapters, in which Saint 
Simon describes the France of his day and which even 
now thrill the reader with indignation, it is easy to 
realise how all this misery and oppression, repeated and 



140 SAINT SIMON. 

intensified through three successive reigns, produced at 
last the Revolution of 1789 ; and the only wonder is 
that the people should have suffered so patiently and 
endured so long. But, even in Saint Simon's time, we 
have warnings of the coming storm ; we are told of ris- 
ings among the peasantry which had to be suppressed by 
strong bodies of troops ; of serious bread riots in Paris ; 
of murmurs and execrations heard even under the win- 
dows of Versailles ; of insulting placards affixed to the 
statues of the king ; and of treasonable letters, some of 
which found their way to Louis himself, hinting that 
there were still Ravaillacs left in the world, and that 
a Brutus might yet be found to avenge the wrongs of a 
long-suffering country. 

Some years before this, Yauban, perhaps the purest 
patriot as well as the most skilful engineer in France, 
had been profoundly touched by what he had seen of 
the state of the provinces as he went on official journeys 
from one fortress to another. The last twenty years of 
his life had been devoted to a personal inquiry into the 
trade, productions, and revenues of the country, and he 
had summed up his information in a volume which 
reviewed the existing system of taxation, exposed its 
abuses and enormities, and proposed to abolish the 
multifarious customs and duties, as well as the host 
of officials employed in collecting them. In their place 
Yauban would have had one grand tax — the " Royai 
Tithe " — to be levied partly upon land and partly upon 
trade ; and thus some relief, he thought, would be given 
to the hard-working tillers of the soil, — a class " so de- 
spised, and yet so useful, which has suffered so deeply, 
and is suffering still." 



& 



vauban's scheme. 141 

Bnt Vauban's sclieme, like other sweeping measures 
of reform, clashed with the "vested interests" of the 
day. The whole army of collectors — from the controller- 
general down to the humblest clerk — saw at once that 
if it were carried into effect, the hope of their gains 
was gone, and they one and all joined in a strenuous 
opposition. 

" This book," says Saint Simon, " had one great fault. 
Though it would, as a matter of fiact, have given to the king 
more than he got by the modes of taxation in use up to that 
time ; though it would have saved the people from ruin and 
distress, and would have enriched them by allowing them to 
enjoy, with a very slight exception, all that did not actually 
enter the king's treasury ; — it would have ruined a host of 
capitalists, of agents, and emijloyes of every sort ; it would 
have forced 11x67)1 to seek a livelihood at their own expense, 
and no longer at that of the public, and would have sapped 
the foundations of those immense fortunes which we have 
seen spring up in so short a time. This was what checked 
the scheme of Vauban." 

Chamillart, then Minister of Finance, gave way to the 
pressure put upon him by the privileged classes, and Louis 
himself was led to believe that Vauban's scheme was that 
of a meddlesome republican, Avhose views were at once 
mischievous and treasonable. Indeed, one sentence in the 
book was pointed out to him as intended to strike at the 
first principles of absolute monarchy. " It was unjust," 
Vauban had written, "that all the body should suffer 
to put one of its members at ease." Accordingly, when 
the Marshal presented his work to the king, he was 
received ungraciously, and was told in plain language 
that his views were dangerous and revolutionary ; while 
the copies of his book were at once impounded by the 



142 SAINT SIMON. 

police. This ingratitude from a monarch whom he had 
served only too well was a deathblow to the old man, 
then in his seventy - fourth year. He withdrew from 
Court in cruel disappointment, and a few weeks after- 
wards died at his country-house of a broken heart. 

In one sense Vauban's scheme died with him ; but it 
died only to be revived in a new form not many years 
afterwards. Desmarets had succeeded Chamillart as 
Minister of Finance, and had exhausted every ajDparent 
means of raising money, — doubling and trebling the 
capitation tax, and increasing the taxes on all commodi- 
ties till they amounted to four times their value. At 
last, driven to his wits' end and (as Saint Simon puts 
it) " not knowing of what wood to make a crutch to lean 
upon," Desmarets proposed that the "Eoyal Tithe" 
should be levied upon all classes in addition to their 
other burdens, although when Yauban had proposed it 
by way of superseding every other tax, it had been 
rejected as something too monstrous to be put in force. 
A Commission was appointed to see if it was practicable, 
and they reported in favour of levying it. But, even 
then, Louis shrank back with something like horror 
from the idea of imposing this last burden on his sub- 
jects. However, to relieve his conscience he consulted 
Pere Tellier, and that Jesuit, with the easy logic of his 
Order, assured him that the most learned doctors of the 
Sorbonne had unanimously agreed that the property of 
the people was really the property of the king, and that, 
if he confiscated it, he was, after all, only taking back 
what was properly his own. 

Accordingly, this tax, " designed," says Saint Simon, 
" by a bureau of cannibals, was signed, sealed, and regis- 



THE ROYAL TITHE. 143 

tered amid stifled sobs, and proclaimed amid most sub- 
dued but most piteous lamentations." No person in the 
state was exempt from it, and the odious inquisition into 
private incomes and property, necessary for its enforce- 
ment, made it still more detestable. Even the king's 
own family spoke of it with abhorrence, and contrasted 
such injustice with the paternal government of ancient 
times ; they denounced it " with a holy anger that re- 
called the memory of Saint Louis, of Louis XII. the 
father of his people, and of Louis the Just." So heavy 
had the weight of taxation now become, that the pro- 
vince of Languedoc offered to give up its entire revenues 
to the Crown, on condition of being allowed to keep a 
tenth part clear of taxes. But this proposal was re- 
jected as an insult. 

The only practical result of this heavy imposition 
seems to have been that Louis was able to add five men 
to each company of his infantry; that the Carnival began 
earlier; and that, as if to drown care, the winter balls 
and fetes at Marly were on a more splendid scale than 
ever. Yet all the while, adds our chronicler, " Paris did 
not remain the less sad, nor the provinces the less 
desolated.** 



Ui 



CHAPTER XL 

MEUDON AND MONSEIGNEUR. 

It is scarcely possible to follow Saint Simon's Memoirs 
by summers and winters in the way Tbucydides -wrote 
liis history, for the simple reason that our writer 
never troubled himself about chronological sequence, 
but tells his story as the fancy leads him, without any 
regard to method or arrangement— perhaps even thinking 
that such mechanical details belonged rather to "the 
men of the quill," whom he holds in such profound con- 
tempt, than to a grand seigneur like himself. It would 
be an endless task to keep step with him along his own 
track, as he wanders from subject to subject, and from 
one digression to another, breaking off from the stirring 
incidents of the war to describe some scandal at the 
Court, or to give the pedigree of some gentleman-in- 
waiting. All that can be done, if we attempt to follow 
him at all, is to select the more striking episodes and 
characters, and to disentangle the scattered threads of 
individual histories. 

Leaving, therefore, for a while, the war and the pro- 
vinces, and going back to Saint Simon's personal life at 
Court, it may be remembered that he often speaks with 



MONSEIGNEUR. 145 

mingled fear and aversion of the "Meudon cabal." 
Meudon was Monseigneur's country-house, and "Mon- 
seigneur" was the name by which the Dauphin was 
always kno^vn. He resembled his father, says a ^vriter, 
" as Vitellius might have resembled Julius Csesar." He 
had the fine features of the Bourbons, but they were 
without expression and bloated by excess ; he had the 
grand deportment, but it was disfigured by his corpu- 
lence; he had the majestic carriage, but halted in his 
walk. All the grand social qualities of Louis were vul- 
garised in his son. The king would play for large sums 
with a magnificent indifference as to whether he won or 
lost, and often paid the gambling debts of his courtiers. 
Monseigneur also played for high stakes, but always 
with a greedy anxiety to win what he could. The king 
had thrown a halo of romance over his amours, but 
Monseigneur's mistress was one Choin — " a great, fat, 
flat-nosed brunette " — who came by the back-stairs, and 
had the air and appearance of a servant-maid. " As to 
character," says Saint Simon, " Monseigneur had none." 

" He was without vice or virtue, without talent or any sort 
of knowledge, and radically incapable of acquiring any. 
Extremely lazy, without imagination or originality, without 
refinement, without taste, without discernment ; born to be 
the prey of a weariness which he imparted to others, and to 
be a stone set rolling haphazard by another's impulsion ; 
obstinate and excessively mean in everything ; easily pre- 
judiced beyond all conception, and ready to believe every- 
thing he saw; given over to the most mischievous hands, 
and incapable of either extricating himself or perceiving his 
position ; drowned in his fat and his mental blindness 
(tenebres) ; so that, without wishing to do wrong, he would 
have made a pernicious king," 

F.C. — X. K 



146 SAINT SIMON. 

His ignorance, even for a Bom'TDon, was something 
surprising. He knew nothing whatever of any subject 
except cookery", could talk of nothing except his last 
boar -hunt, and read nothing except the list of bhths 
and deaths in the Gazette. He never took the slightest 
interest in politics or affairs of the day. Even when 
Lille was besieged, and, as we have seen, the Court was 
in a fever of anxiety for news from the seat of war, 
Monseigneur went out hunting as usual ; and on coming 
back one afternoon, he recited a long list of strange 
names of places he had passed in the forest to the Princess 
de Conti. " Dear me ! Monseigneur," said the lady, out 
of patience, " what a wonderful memory you have ! It 
is a thousand pities you should load it with such trifles." 
He seems to have been incapable of deep feeling of any 
kind, and his heartlessness extended even to his own 
family. When the Court was plunged into consterna- 
tion by the sudden death of " Monsieur," the king's 
brother, Monseigneur did not show the slightest emo- 
tion, but rode off to a wild-boar hunt ; and even when 
his old friend and companion, the Prince de Conti, was 
on his deathbed, Monseigneur drove past his house, 
along one side of the Quai de Louvre, to the opera, 
while the priests were carrying the Sacrament to the 
dying man along the other side, without even stopping 
his carriage. 

Except on State occasions, he rarely went to Ver- 
sailles, if he could help it, for he was oppressed by the 
formality and decorum of the Court, and felt the piety of 
his son, the Duke of Burgundy, to be a kind of reflection 
on his own life ; while, like the rest of the royal family, 
he never ventured to open his mouth in the king's pres- 



MONSEIGNEUR. 147 

ence. Indeed, Louis, -whatever his private feelings may 
have been, never showed his son the least aifection, and 
always, says Saint Sinion, treated him "with the air of 
a king rather than a parent." His opinion was rarely 
asked, and his advice — if he offered it — was rarely acted 
upon, except perhaps in the solitary instance of the 
Spanish succession. 

In spite of the vigorous health of Louis, and the 
fatal prediction made at his own birth — " son of a 
king, father of a king, never a king" — Monseigneur 
seems to have occasionally indulged in the idea of suc- 
ceeding to the throne. Only a few months before his 
death. Saint Simon tells us that he was found turn- 
ing over some prints of the coronation ceremony with 
two of his lady friends, who were eagerly pointing 
out the various personages. " See, there is the man 
who will put the spinas on for you, and that one will 
give you the royal mantle, and here are the peers who 
will place the crown on your head." The anecdote is 
worthless except as illustrating the innocent vanity of 
the man. 

Monseigneur's happiest days were passed at his own 
chateau of Meudon, where he lived at his ease like an 
ordinary country gentleman, keeping open house, hunt- 
ing daily in the forest, and filling up his time otherwise 
pleasantly enough ; playing cards and talking, seated with 
the ladies of his little Court. There was never any Avant 
of society ; in fact, Meudon, like Carlton House in the 
days of George III., became the headquarters of " the 
Opposition," — a cave of Adullam, a house of refuge for 
all the gay and turbulent spirits who sought an escape 
from the constraints of Versailles. Gathered there 



148 SAINT SIMON. 

might be found a brilliant and incongruous new society 
— " libertins," as Louis disdainfully called them — 
sceptics and freethinkers, wits like La Fare and Bussy 
Rabutin, beauties like Madame de Soubise and the two 
Lislebonnes, soldiers like Yendome and Luxemburg, 
poets and abbes, statesmen and philosophers, all taking 
their part in the famous " parvulos " of Meudon. 

The queen of this society was " Madame la Duchesse," 
to whose fascinations Saint Simon is obliged to do un- 
willing justice, much as he both feared and hated her ; 
and associated with her was a name that carried with 
it a romantic interest, the Prince de Conti, a nephew of 
the great Conde. 

" He was the constant delight of the world, of the Court, 
and of the army ; the divinity of the people, the idol of the 
soldiers, the hero of the officers, the hope of all that was 
most distinguished in the army, the delight of the Parlia- 
ment, the discriminating friend of the savants, and often the 
admiration of the Sorbonne, of lawyers, of astronomers, and 
of the profoundest mathematicians. He had talents of the 
finest kind — luminous, just, exact, vast, extensive — with an 
infinite knowledge of hooks, — one who forgot nothing and 
knew by heart all public and private histories and gene- 
alogies, their chimeras and their realities." 

When he talked, we are told that young and old alike 
hung upon his words, that men forgot the dinner-hour, 
and left the royal circle in the drawing-room at Marly in 
their eagerness to listen. In his younger days Conti had 
burned to distinguish himself as a soldier, and had shown 
that he inherited something of Condi's spirit, when he 
charged at the head of the household troops and saved 
the day at N^eerwinden. But Louis, according to Saint 



CONTI. 149 

Simon, was jealous of his brilliant talents,^ and Conti 
found himself at the age of thirty the only prince of 
the blood -royal left without even the command of a 
regiment. This neglect preyed upon his mind, and, to 
drown his grief and disappointment, he plunged into the 
wildest dissipation, and when the coveted opportunity 
of distinction came at last, it was too late. His health 
had been undermmed by his excesses, and he sank into 
a rapid decline. The crowds who filled the churches 
night and day offering prayers for his recovery, and the 
incessant stream of visitors that filled the ante-rooms of 
his house in Paris, showed how strong a hold his char- 
acter had taken on public feeling. There must have 
been something singularly fascinating about this prince, 
when, in spite of his notorious profligacy, we find him 
spoken of with warm aff"ection by such men as Fenelon 
and Bossuet, Chevreuse and Beauvilliers. 

Saint Simon says of Conti — " This man, so charming, 
so amiable, so delightful, loved nothing; he had and 
desired friends as one has and desires furniture ; " evi- 
dently forgetting that in another passage he has spoken 
of his strong affection for his sister-in-law, Madame la 
Duchesse, — an affection that was almost romantic in 
its constancy and hopelessness, and that ceased only 
with his death. Even when elected King of Poland, 
he was not sorry to give up the barren honour to the 
Elector of Saxony, and return to the charmed circle 

1 We give Conti's story as Saint Simon has given it, but he does 
not even allude to the scandal of 1686 (mentioned by both Madame 
de Maintenon and Madame de Sevigne), and which was probably the 
reason why the king always regarded this brilliant prince with such 
special disfavour. Conti was, if anything, a worse character than 
Vendome. 



150 SAINT SIMON. 

at Meudon. " It was too much to expect," says Saint 
Simon, " that the brilliancy of a cro^vn should prevail 
over the horrors of perpetual banishment." 

Everything that was evil in Saint Simon's eye came 
from Meudon. The place was " beset with dangers and 
pitfalls " and " infested by demons." The brilliant 
society collected there were all so many personal enemies 
bent on his destruction. Madame la Duchesse regarded 
him with special animosity. He was at daggers-drawn 
both with Antin and Yendome, two of the leading 
sphits in the cabal ; and some busybody had told Mon- 
seigneur that Saint Sunon had called him " a great 
imbecile, whom any one could lead by the nose," and, so 
far as Monseigneur's sluggish nature was capable of strong 
feeling, he showed strong and not unnatural indignation 
on the subject. As the king was now seventy-three, 
there seemed every probability that Monseigneur would 
succeed him before long ; and to Saint Simon, who knew 
how completely the Dauphin was in the hands of the 
clique that made Meudon their headquarters, his pros- 
pects in the next reign were of the gloomiest description. 

But an unexpected deliverance appeared. Saint Simon 
had gone down to keep Easter, as usual, at his country- 
house, when he heard that Monseigneur had been sud- 
denly seized with the small-pox, and was lying between 
life and death at Meudon. Saint Simon tells us with 
what " an ebb and flow of emotion " he heard this news, 
and how "the man and the Christian struggled with 
the man of the world and the courtier." In a torment 
of uncertainty he left La Ferte and returned to Ver- 
sailles ; and there he heard that Monseigneur had so 
far recovered, that his friends the fishwonien of Paris 



MONSEIGNEURS ILLNESS. 151 

had left their markets and come over in a body to con- 
gratulate their favourite prince. Saint Simon sought out 
the Duchess of Orleans (who, like himself, hated Meudon 
and all that belonged to it); and, as he puts it, "the 
drag was taken ofi' their tongues in this rare conversa- 
tion." With the utmost frankness they condoled with 
one another on the prospects of Monseigneur's recovery 
in spite of his age and corpulence ; " and you may be 
certain," sadly added the Duchess, with a spark of the 
wit of Mortemart, "if his Highness once gets over the 
small-pox, there is not the faintest chance of his dying 
of apoplexy or indigestion." 

But, even while Saint Simon and the Duchess of 
Orleans were thus charitably talking, a change had taken 
place for the worse at Meudon. Alarming symptoms 
suddenly showed themselves, and there was only just 
time to administer the last sacrament before Monseigneur 
lost consciousness, and an hour afterwards Fagon, the 
Court physician, announced that all was over. 

The king had hurried from Versailles to Meudon at 
the first alarm of the Dauphin's clanger, but the Prin- 
cess of Conti met him in the doorway and prevented 
his entering the sick-room, for he had never had the 
small-pox himself. Then, overcome by the shock (for 
he had loved his son after a fashion), he sank fainting on 
a sofa in the ante-room, while Madame de Maintenon 
sat by his side giving him what comfort she could, and 
"tried hard to shed some tears herself." At last Louis 
was led to his coach, and drove off to Marly among a 
crowd of unfortunate valets and servants of Monseigneur's 
household, all crying out that they had lost their master, 
and must die of hunger. 



152 SAINT SIMON. 

It was nearly midniglit when a courier arrived at 
Versailles with the news of Monseigneur's death ; and 
Saint Simon has painted for us, as he only can paint, 
the details of the horribly grotesque scene that ensued 
when the long gallery was filled from end to end with 
crowds of half-dressed princes and courtiers roused from 
their beds ; and he has described for us every posture, 
every attitude, and every gesture in the scattered gToups 
— each countenance telling its own history, as he feasted 
his eyes on the rich study of human nature, — unmoved 
himself except by a lingering dread that the sick man 
might, after all, have recovered, and at the same time 
heartily ashamed of such an unworthy feeling. The 
valets, he says, could not contain their " bellowings," 
for they had lost a master " who seemed expressly 
made for them ; " the greatest part of the courtiers — 
" that is, the fools — dragged out their sighs with their 
nails, and with dry and wandering eyes praised the 
departed prince." Some, again, remained buried in 
thought, and saying nothing ; others evidently relieved, 
but hiding their happiness by an assumed air of sadness, 
— " but the veil over their face was transparent, and hid 
not a single expression." The Duke of Burgundy was 
strongly moved, and showed natural sorrow; the Duchess, 
graceful as usual, had a troubled air of compassion, 
" which every one took for grief, but she found extreme 
difficulty in keeping up appearances, and when her 
brother-in-law [the Duke of Berry] howled — she blew 
her nose ;" the Duchess of Orleans, " whose majestic coun- 
tenance told nothing;" her husband weeping violently 
in a back room, where Saint Simon found him, to his 
great amazement, and implored him to dry his eyes at 



MONSEIGNEUR S DEATH. 153 

once, " for every one who saw them red would consider 
it a most ill-timed comedy." Then there was the 
" Meudon cabal " plunged into hitter grief at the sud- 
den downfall of their hopes and schemes,— the Duchess 
of Eerry in particular " showing horror mingled with 
despair painted on her face — a kind of furious grief, 
based not on affection but on interest." Amidst it all, 

"Madame,! arrayed in full dress, arrived on the scene 
howling, and, not knowing why or wherefore, flooded them 
all with her tears as she embraced them, and made the 
palace re-echo again with her cries, and presented the extra- 
ordinary spectacle of a princess who had put on her State 
dress at midnight to come and weep and lament among a 
crowd of women in their night-dresses, almost like mas- 
queraders. 

" In the gallery there were several tent-bedsteads placed 
there for security, in which some of the Swiss guards and 
servants slept, and they had been put out as usual before 
the bad news came from Meudon. While some of the ladies 
were talking most earnestly, Madame de Castries, who touched 
one of the beds, felt it move, and was much terrified, A 
moment afterwards the ladies saw a great bare arm suddenly 
draw aside the curtain and disclose to them a stout honest 
Swiss guard between the sheets, half awake and utterly dum- 
foundered, and who took a long time to make out the com- 
pany in which he found himself, though he stared intently 
at them all, one after the other ; and at last, not thinking 
it proper to get up in the midst of such a grand assemblage, 
he buried himself in his bed and drew the curtain again. 
Apparently the good fellow had gone to bed before any- 
body had heard the news, and had slept so profoundly ever 
since as to have only just awoke. The saddest sights are 
often liable to the most absurd contrasts. This sieht made 



Monsieur's widow, — see p. 62. 



154 SAINT SIMON. 

all tlie ladies near the bed laugh, and caused some alarm 
to the Duchess of Orleans and her friends who had been 
talking with her, lest the}^ should have been overheard ; but, 
on reflection, they were reassured by the heavy slumber 
and stupidity of the fellow." 

There was little sleep for any one else on that eventful 
night, and Saint Simon was himself astir again at seven 
in the morning ; but, he says, " such restlessness is sweet, 
and such awakenings have a pleasant flavour of their 
own." 



155 



CHAPTEE XII. 

THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF BUEGUNDT. 

The nine months that followed Monseigneiir's death 
was certainly the happiest period of Saint Simon's life. 
Not only was he free from a sense of impending evil 
from the "Meiidon cabal," which, as we have seen, 
haunted him perpetually, but the young Duke of Bur- 
gundy, who now succeeded to his father's position as the 
Dauphin of France, became his intimate personal friend 
and supporter, and for the time being nothing could be 
brighter than his j)rospects. We are told that, when a 
boy, the new Dauphin had been passionate and way-, 
ward — furious with the weather when it rained, and 
breaking the clocks that struck the hour of his lessons ; 
and his pride was such, says Saint Simon, that " he 
■seemed to look down from the height of the heavens on 
men as mere atoms, to whom he bore no resemblance, 
and scarcely even acknowledged the princes, his brothers, 
as intermediate links between himself and the human 
race." But, happily for himself, he came under the good 
influence of Fenelon and Fleury at this crisis of his life, 
and " God, who is the master of hearts, and whose 
divine spirit breathes where He wills, made of this 



156 SAINT SIMON. 

prince a work of His right hand, and he came forth 
from this abyss affable, gentle, humane, moderate, patient, 
modest, humble, and austere." He passed indeed from 
one extreme to the other, and his piety and reserve at 
times tried the patience of his best friends at Court. 
He refused to be present at a ball given at Marly on 
Twelfth Night, because it hapjDcned to be the Feast of 
the Epiphany as well ; and once even Louis, when 
summoning him to a council of war, said ironically, 
" Come,— that is, unless you prefer going to Vespers." 
He lived at this time the life of a recluse, absorbed in 
study, and constantly reading the "Blue-books" of his 
day, — long treatises on finance, on commerce, and on the 
internal administration of France, prepared for him by 
practical statesmen like Chevreuse and Beauvilliers. 

It was through the good offices of these veteran poli- 
ticians that Saint Simon owed his introduction to the 
young prince. "For many years they never lost the 
opportunity," he says, " of inspiring him with feelings 
of friendship, esteem, and personal regard for me ; " and 
then, with that warmth of affection which was as strong 
a feeling with him as his hatred, Saint Simon made an 
idol of the young prince, and credited him with being 
nothing less than perfection both in head and heart. 
As has been seen, he supported him warmly when 
attacked for his conduct during the campaign of 1708 ; 
he was never weary of enlarging on his talents and 
capacity to the small circle of devoted friends who had, 
like himself, great hopes of Fenelon's pupil ; and, as 
Saint Simon was never happy unless he had a pen in his 
hand, it probably needed very little persuasion on the 
part of Beauvilliers to induce him to put on paper his 



THE DAUPHI]!^. 157 

views on what may be called the whole duty of a prince. 
It is an eloquent if a somew^hat incoherent essay, and 
begins with a graceful compliment to Fenelon, whose 
hand "was so singularly formed by heaven to sow the good 
seed on a rich soil." What the Dauphin most required 
was that knowledge of the world that can never be 
gained from books or the companionship of "a troop of 
women." He must not carry his studies too far into 
life, much less waste his time on abstract science, on 
mechanics, or on frivolous experiments. He should leave 
such vanities to priests and recluses, and apply himself 
instead to the one master-science — that of government 
■ — to which all other sciences are but as stepping-stones. 
He should talk less to his confessor, and more to the 
statesmen and politicians of his day ; he should make 
friends with men of different classes, and learn from 
each and all lessons of real life that would be of more 
value to a future king than all the folios of the Jesuits 
or all the learning of the Sorbonne ; and he should 
gather this practical knowledge from the best men of 
their class, " as bees gather the sweetest honey from 
different flowers." And thus he would become himself, 
as a true prince should be, " an epitome of the State." 

The Dauphin's character seems to have received a 
fresh impulse after Monseigneur's death. He left his 
study and his books, and began to mingle freely in 
society, talking sensibly and agreeably, and charming all 
alike by his polite and graceful manner. " He became 
a second Prince de Conti ; people opened their eyes and 
ears, and asked one another if this was the same man 
they had known before, and if it was a dream or a 
reality." 



158 SAINT SIMON. 

The king showed him every mark of confidence ; the 
Ministers had orders to take their portfolios to him, and 
acquaint him with all public business ; and we are told 
that in their turn they were astonished, though not 
altogether delighted, at the variety and depth of his 
information. As to Saint Simon, this change was like 
the realisation of some delightful dream. Here was a 
prince such as his fancy had pictured, impressed like 
himself with a sense of the dignity of the ducal order, of 
the usurpations of the " bourgeoisie " and the " bastards," 
and of the necessity of reconstructing society on the old 
lines of feudalism. The prince and the duke had long 
interviews, in which they discussed and arranged the 
policy of the future ; but these interviews were kept a 
profound secret from all the world. But one afternoon 

" The sitting was a long one, and after it ended we sorted our 
papers. He gave me some of his to put in my pocket, and he 
took some of mine. He shut them up in his desk, and in- 
stead of putting the rest in his bureau he left them outside, 
and began to talk with his back to the fireplace — his papers 
in one hand and his bag in the other. I was standing up 
near the bureau looking for certain papers, and holding some 
others in my hand, when all at once the door opened oppo- 
site me and the Dauphiness entered. 

" The first coup d^oeil of all three of us — for, thank heaven! 
she was alone — the astonishment painted on our three faces, 
have never left my memory. This fixed stare, this statue- 
like immobility, this silence and embarrassment in all three 
of us, lasted longer than a slow Pater. The princess broke 
it first. She said to the prince in a very discomposed voice, 
that she did not think he was in such good company — 
smiling at him and then at me. I had time to smile also, 
and then lower my eyes before the Dauphin answered. 
' Since you find me so, maclame,' said he, smiling at the 



SAINT SIMON AND THE DUKE OF BUEGUNDY. 159 

same time, * be off with you.' She stood an instant looking 
at him and smiling still more, and he at her, and then she 
turned a pirouette, went out, and closed the door, for she had 
not passed beyond the threshold. 

"Never did I see a woman so astonished ; never (and I must 
use a slang expression) did I see a man so dumfoundered 
(penaud) as the prince even after she had gone; never was 
a man — for I must confess it — in such a terrible fright as I 
was at first, though I felt reassured as soon as I saw that 
she was not followed. As soon as she had shut the door — 
' Well, sir,' said I to the Dauphin, ' if you had only chosen 
to draw the bolt ! ' ' You are right,' said he, ' and I was 
wrong ; but there is no harm done. Luckily she was by 
herself, and I will answer for her secrecy.' ' I am not at 
all troubled,' said I — although I was mightily afraid all the 
time — ' but it is a miracle that she came by herself. If her 
suite had been with her, you would perhaps have got off with 
a scolding, but I should have been irrecoverably ruined.' " 

However, the Dauphiness kept the secret, and in 
future these two consiDirators were more cautious in 
th.eir interviews, though they still met frequently, and 
built their castles in the air with all the ardour of young 
reformers. The key-note of their system was a sentence 
which the Dauphin had ventured to utter even in the 
drawing-room at Marly — that " kings are made for the 
people, and not the people for the king." Society was 
to be reorganised on a more just and liberal basis in 
the next reign. The long ascendancy of the " vil 
bourgeois " was to come to an end ; there were to be 
no more plebeian Ministers like Colbert and Torcy, no 
more officers and governors drawn from " the Third 
Estate ; " the powers of the old aristocracy were to be 
revived ; a council of sixty was to take the place of the 
Cabinet of six ; the abuses of centuries were to be 



160 SAINT SIMON. 

swept away ; all citizens were to be equal before the 
law, and share equally in the burdens of taxation ; 
there was to be a new France and a new people, not 
worn out with toil and misery, but free, contented, and 
industrious ; and above them, tier upon tier, were to rise 
the ranks of the peerage, culminating in the Dukes, 
second to royalty alone, and " the most precious jewels 
of the crown." And, as in Plato's Eepublic nothing 
was needed for its fulfilment but a prince who should 
be a philosopher as well, so in Saint Simon's Utopia all 
was to be realised when the Dauphin became a king. 
The Duke of Burgundy was to be " the second Ezra, 
who should restore the temple, and lead back the people 
of God after their long captivity." 

The young Duchess of Burgundy was far more popular 
than her husband. She had brought with her to the 
jaded Court at Yersailles all the freshness and spirit of 
a young girl of seventeen, and lighted up every corner 
of the gloomy palace like sunshine on a winter's day. 
Louis himself almost idolised her, and showed her far 
more affection than he had ever shown to his own 
children. A letter of his addressed to Madame de 
Maintenon is still preserved, in which he graphic- 
ally describes how greatly her first aj)pearance had 
delighted him ; and he dwells upon her charms much 
as a veteran trainer would describe the points of some 
promising young colt. But her personal beauty was not 
so striking as her charming figure, her sweet expres- 
sion, and her graceful carriage. " Her walk," says 
Saint Simon, "was that of a goddess over clouds. 
The Graces sprang up of themselves at every step she 



DUCHESS OF BURGUNDY. 161 

took. They adorned all her manners and her simplest 
words." ^ 

Madame de Maintenon undertook her education, for 
she was hardly twelve years old when she arrived at 
Versailles, . and she was constantly with her and Louis — 
indeed, the old king was never happy when the young 
girl was out of his sight. She would amuse him with 
her lively stories ; would talk " slang " {haragouinage) 
in her Italian way ; caress him, pinch him, turn over his 
papers, read his letters, mimic the Ministers almost to 
their faces, and interrupt the gravest conversation with 
some gay remark. One day Louis was talking to 
Madame de Maintenon over the chances of peace at the 
accession of Queen Anne. " My aunt," said the Dauph- 
iness, " you must allow that the queens govern better 
than the kings in England ; and do you know why, my 
aunt % " Then, skipping about the room all the while, 
she went on — " Because under kings it is the women 
who govern, and the men under the queens." The best 
of it was, continues Saint Simon, that both the king 
and Madame de Maintenon laughed heartily, and said 
she was right. 

Nothing can be tenderer or more graceful than Saint 
Simon's picture of the young duchess who had won all 
their hearts ; and he passes lightly over her indiscretions, 
though one flirtation (innocent enough on her side) had 
a strangely tragical ending. The disappointed lover — 
an Abbe Maulevrier — grew so frantically jealous of his 

■■■ Saint Simon, consciously or unconsciously, is translating Pro- 
pertius. Those who "vvisli to see a more modern translation of these 
famous lines should consult Sir A. Helps's ' Realmah' (i. 266). 

F.C. X. L 



162 SAINT SIMON. 

supposed rival, a young captain in the Guards, that, 
after a hundred follies, he went raving mad, threw 
himself from a window in his delirium, and was miser- 
ably dashed to pieces. The young princess shed some 
bitter tears at the time, and did not recover her usually 
gay spirits for weeks afterwards. Yet neither her hus- 
band nor the king ever guessed the true reason of 
Maulevrier's death, and the secret, if there was one, was 
faithfully kept by those who knew it. Even in that 
Court of scandal and intrigue she had not made an 
enemy. " Ah, my dear Duke ! " wrote Madame de 
Maintenon to De ISToailles after her death, "who, in- 
deed, that ever knew her, could help loving her ] " 

" One evening, at Fontainebleau, when the ladies and prin- 
cesses were in the same room as herself and the king after 
supper, she had been talking nonsense in all kinds of lan- 
guages, and said a hundred childish things to amuse the 
king, who delighted in them, when she noticed the two 
princesses of Conde and Conti looking at her, making signs 
to one another, and shrugging their shoulders with an air of 
contempt and disdain. The king rose and passed into a back 
room to feed his dogs, and the Dauphiness then took Madame 
de Saint Simon by one hand, and Madame de Levy by the 
other, and pointed to the two princesses, who were only a 
few paces from them. 'Did you see? did you see?' said 
she; ' I know just as well as they do that there is no com- 
mon-sense in what I have just done and said, and that it is 
all wretched stuff : still, one must make a noise, and this 
sort of thing amuses him' (the king). Then, all at once, 
leaning on their arms, she began to dance and sing. ' Ha, 
ha ! I laugh at it all ! Ha, ha ! I make fun of them, and 
I shall be their queen, and I have nothing to do with them 
either now or ever after, and they will have to reckon with 
me, and I shall be their queen,' still jumping and skipjjing 



DEATH OF THE DAUPHINESS. 163 

about, and playing the fool with all her might. Her two 
ladies begged her, in a low voice, to keep quiet, or the 
princesses would hear her, and all the people in the room 
would see her doing this. They even went so far as to say 
she was out of her mind, for she heard nothing but good 
advice from them ; but she only began to dance more vigor- 
ously, and sing in a louder tone, ' Ha, ha ! I make fun of 
them ! I don't care for them, and I shall be their queen.' 
And she only ceased when the king re-entered the room. 

"Alas ! she believed it all — this charming princess — and 
who would not have believed it with her ? It pleased God for 
our misfortunes to rule it otherwise, not long after this scene, 
She was so far from thinking of it herself, that on Candle- 
mas-day, being alone with Madame de Saint Simon, she 
began to talk of the number of persons at Court whom she 
had known and who had died, and then of what she would 
do herseK when she grew old, and of the life she would leadj 
and how there was scarcely any one left about her of the 
time of her own youth. 

"With her were eclipsed all joy, pleasure, and even amuse- 
ment and every kind of grace. Darkness covered the sur- 
face of the Court ; she had animated it all, — had filled all 
places at once ; her presence had occupied and penetrated 
every corner of it. If the Court existed after her, it was 
only to languish. Never was a princess so regretted, and 
never was there one more worthy of regret. So the regret 
for her has never passed awa}^, and involuntary and secret 
bitterness of heart has abided with us, together with a 
frightful void that nothing can fill up." 

Her death took place early in the year 1712. Ac- 
cording to Saint Simon, she had been in perfect health 
up to that time, but had rashly taken some Spanish 
snuff given her by the Duke of Noailles, and the same 
evening she was attacked by an acute pain in the 
temples, followed by a violent fever. For several days 



164 SAINT SIMON. 

her sufferings were intense, and she gradually lost 
strength, as this mysterious disease fastened upon her 
system. The doctors tried the severe remedies then 
in fashion — opium, bleeding, and emetics — but without 
success. The fever increased, and, "like a devouring 
fire," says Saint Simon, " preyed upon her night and 
day." She was induced to make her last confession, 
though she would not make it to her own confessor ; 
the prayers for the dying were said over her ; the Sacra- 
ment was administered ; and soon afterwards she sank 
into a stupor from which she never rallied. 

It was known that the Dauphin was sickening of the 
same terrible fever, but, as long as he could stand, he 
could not be induced to leave his wife's bedside. For 
the first few days of her illness he bore up against his 
sufferings, but at last his strength gave way, and he was 
carried to his rooms at Marly. Saint Simon saw him 
there for the last time, and was terrified at his wild and 
haggard looks, and at the livid marks on his face. 

"His attendants proposed to him, once or twice, to go to 
the king's room, but he neither moved nor answered. I 
drew near and made him signs to go, and then proposed it to 
him in a low voice. Seeing that he still stayed and kept 
silence, I ventured to take him by the arm, to represent to 
him that, sooner or later, he must see the king, — that his 
Majesty was expecting him, and sorely desired to see and 
embrace him ; and pressing him thus, I took the liberty to 
gently push him on. He threw on me a look that pierced 
me to the lieavt, and went. I followed him a few paces, 
and tore myself away from the spot to gather breath. I 
never saw him again from that moment. May it please God 
in His mercy that I may see him eternally, where his good- 
ness has doubtless placed him ! " 



DEATH OF THE DAUPHIN. 165 

The king embraced his grandson " tenderly, long, and 
many times, their words being almost choked by tears 
and sobs ; " and, immediately after the interview, the 
prince was carried to his bed, and he never left it again. 
The same deadly fever that had carried off his wife had 
now attacked the husband. He lingered, as she had 
done, some fo^u' days in great agony, until death released 
him from his sufferings. 

Scarcely a month afterwards both his young children 
sickened of the measles ; the elder died, and the younger 
brother's life was only saved by most careful nursing. 
The little child, who thus escaped, lived to become after- 
wards Louis XV. 

Thus, three Dauphins had died within a year, and the 
strangely sudden manner of their deaths revived those 
horrible suspicions that had hung about the Duke of 
Orleans all his life. He was now credited with being a 
wholesale murderer, in addition to his other sins. His 
notorious impiety, his scandalous life, and the hours 
passed by him in his laboratory, all served to strengthen 
the popular belief that he had deliberately poisoned the 
Dauphm, the Dauphiness, and their young child, to clear 
his own way to the throne of France. Medical evi- 
dence, also, seemed to point in the same direction ; for 
the seven doctors who had examined the bodies declared 
that some subtle and virulent poison must have been the 
cause of death, with the exception of Marechal, who was 
firm in his opinion that it w^as a by no means unusual 
case of typhoid fever. 

After being embalmed and lying in state, the remains 
of the Dauphin and Dauphiness were carried to their last 
resting-place in the Abbey of St Denis. As the cortege 



166 SAINT SIMON. 

passed by torchlight along the Eue St Honor^ into the 
broad square of the Palais Eoyal, the crowds who lined 
the streets gave way to tears and sobs of grief; but 
when the face of Orleans was seen through the window 
of his coach, there was a furious uproar, for his presence 
in the procession was felt by all to be a sacrilege to the 
dead. Curses and execrations were heard* on all sides ; 
sticks were shaken and stones were thrown ; and, had 
not the Swiss Guards thrust back the mob with their 
halberds. Saint Simon believes that the Duke would 
then and there have been torn to pieces. 

But, with all his vices, Philip of Orleans was not a 
murderer. He was both soft-hearted and affectionate, 
and was, in his own way, attached to his young cousin, 
though their characters were so utterly unlike. After 
the Dauphin's death he had been found by some of the 
attendants stretched upon the ground, and sobbing as if 
his heart would break. But at Court no one believed 
in his innocence. Pumours of the strangest kind were 
spread to his discredit. It was said that a monk who 
had actually administered the poison had been arrested 
by the prefect of police ; that his own wife was to be 
the next victim, and that the Duke then intended to 
marry the widow of the King of Spain. He indignantly 
demanded a public trial, and to be confronted with his 
accusers, and defied the judgment of his peers and the 
Bastille itself, insisting that, in justice to the blood of 
Henry IV., France must be convinced of his innocence. 
Louis only shrugged his shoulders. " I can tell you," he 
coldly answered, " that the only accusers you have with 
me are your own immorality and frightful laxity of prin- 
ciple." At Court he was shunned like a pariah, — no one 



SAINT SIMON'S GRIEF. 167 

would come near him or speak to him ; and at last his 
solitude greAV so insupportable that he left Versailles, and 
took up his quarters again in the Palais Eoyal, where, 
says Saint Simon, it seemed to be a wager between him- 
self and his daughter (the Duchess of Berry) which of 
them could scandalise most both religion and morality. 

Saint Simon was himself plunged in the most bitter 
grief by the sudden loss of the young prince. At first 
he was inconsolable. He shut himself up in his rooms, 
and would see no one : indeed, had it not been for 
his wife, he would have left the Court altogether, and 
retired to his country-seat. The light of heaven, he 
says, seemed to have faded from the earth ; the hand of 
death had robbed him of the most cherished and precious 
object of his life. His pathetic burst of sorrow recalls 
another occasion, when the heir of a great empire was 
suddenly cut off in the fulness of his youth and promise ; 
and Saint Simon's lament over the Duke of Burgundy 
echoes the spirit and almost the words of Virgil's lament 
over the young Marcellus. " You have just come back," 
he said to Beauvilliers after the funeral, " from burying 
the fortunes of France. She has fallen under this 
last chastisement. God showed her a prince whom she 
did not deserve ; the earth was not worthy of him ; he 
was already ripe for eternal blessedness." 

" Ostendunt terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra 
Esse sinunt."^ 



1 Fenelon wrote to Beauvilliers in much the same tone. "God," 
he says, ''has taken from ns all our hopes for Church and State. 
He had prepared this young prince for the noblest ends, and had 
shown hira to the world, only to take him almost immediately to 
Himself." 



168 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XIV. 

Even at this lapse of time tliere is sometliing sad in 
reading Saint Simon's account of the last few years of 
the great king's reign. We feel — as Louis felt himself — 
that he has lived too long ; that it would have been better 
for his fame to have died at the height of his glory and 
prosperity, than to have seen his country impoverished 
and exhausted by foreign war ; to have seen the great 
names that had made his reign so famous, one after the 
other disappear from history; and to have seen his family 
through tliree generations go down to the grave before 
him. Death had been busy on all sides of him in 
these latter years. He had lost his wife, his only 
brother, his son, his favourite grandson, and above all 
his grandson's wife, the Duchess of Burgundy, whose 
death had created a A^oid at Versailles which nothing 
could fill up. The great palace was like a desert with- 
out her, and with her the life and sunshine of the Court 
seemed to have passed away for ever. It was in vain 
that Madame de Maintenon tried every means of cheer- 
ing Louis at this melancholy time. Musical evenings at 
the Trianon, scenes from Moliere's plays, conversations 



LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XIV. 1G9 

with his valets, the last new scandal, the last ill-natured 
jest of Lauzun, the last long story told by Villeroy, — 
all the trifles that had occupied and interested him had 
lost their charm. " What a punishment," wrote his 
weary favourite, "to have to amuse a man who is no 
longer amusable ! " 

In some ways the king, though he had passed his seven- 
tieth year, still kept the vigour and energy of former days. 
He would ride and drive for hours in the snow and ram ; 
he would make his periodical journeys from Versailles to 
Marly, and from Marly to Fontainebleau ; and he would 
still give audiences to ambassadors, work whole mornings 
with his Ministers, and preside at councils of State. But 
when the work of the day was over, the long evenings 
passed in Madame de Maintenon's room became more 
and more insupportable both to him and to her. She 
had grown deaf and almost blind — " a living skeleton," 
she calls herself — and the two would sit for hours silent, 
forlorn, and brooding over the memories of the past, 
their solitude only broken by the arrival of a Mmister 
with his tale of some fresh distress in the provinces ; by 
Fagon, the doctor, now bent double with age, but with 
all his former bitterness of tongue; or by Pere Tellier, 
the Jesuit, with his evil face and hateful insinuations. 

There seemed to be a curse upon the house of Bourbon, 
for the Duke of Berry — the best and gentlest of the 
family — died suddenly at the age of twQuty-eight. His 
horse had stumbled while he was out hunting, and thrown 
him so violently against the pommel of the saddle, that 
he bled to death from some internal injury. The heir 
was now the king's great-grandson, a feeble and sickly 
child four years of age. 



170 SAINT SIMON. 

To add to the old king's troubles, a new clique was 
formed to divert the Regency and possible chance of 
succession to the throne from the Duke of Orleans to 
the Duke of Maine, the favourite son of Louis by 
Madame de Montespan. From his boyhood Maine had 
been petted and caressed by Madame de Maintenon; 
and when he grew up, honours and wealth without end 
had been showered upon " this viper on the hearth," as 
Saint Simon calls him. One Act of Parliament had 
removed the bar - sinister from his shield, a second had 
given him precedence of all the dukes in the peerage, 
and a third had placed him within the charmed circle of 
princes of the blood-royal, and made him capable of suc- 
ceeding to the throne as if he had been one of the true 
" sons of France." Some years before his death, Louis 
had made a personal appeal to his son and grandson 
to protect Maine and his children, to whom he had 
just extended all the privileges enjoyed by their father ; 
and he made the elder of them, aged ten, colonel of the 
Swiss Guards, and the younger, aged six^ Master of the 
Artillery. 

"When this had been decided by the king — that is to 
say, between him and Madame de Maintenon — the point 
was to declare it ; and this, declaration produced the strangest 
and most singular scene of any that occurred in all that long 
reign to any one who knew the king, and his intoxication 
with the sense of absolute sovereignty. When he entered 
his private room at Versailles on Saturday night, March 
15th, after supper, and had given his customary orders, he 
advanced gravely into the anteroom, placed himself in front 
of his chair without sitting down, slowly passed his eyes over 
the whole company, and said to them, without addressing 
any one in particular, that he gave the children of the Duke 



THE king's natueal childeen. 171 

of Maine the same rank and honours as their father ; and, 
without a moment's interval, walked to the end of the cabinet, 
and called to him Monseigneur and the Duke of Burgundy. 
Then, for the first time in his life, this monarch so haughty, 
this father so severe, and such a master in his house, humbled 
himself before his son and grandson. He told them that, 
in view of their both successively reigning after him, he 
prayed them to acquiesce in the rank which he had bestowed 
on the children of the Duke of Maine, — to concede so much 
in consideration of the affection which he flattered himself 
they felt for him, and he for these children and for their 
father. He added that, at his great age, and considering 
that his death could not be far distant, he earnestly recom- 
mended them to their care in the most pressing manner he 
could, and he trusted that after his own death they would 
protect them out of regard for his memory." 

Both princes remained dumb with astonishment, and 
the king again implored them to promise that it should 
be so. 

" The two prmces looked at one another, scarcely knowmg 
whether what was passing was a dream or a reality, without 
answering a word the whole time, until, as they were still 
more earnestly entreated by the king, they stammered out 
something or other, without giving a distinct promise. The 
Duke of Maine, embarrassed by their embarrassment, and 
much mortified that no distinct answer had passed their 
lips, threw himself down so as to embrace their knees. It 
was then that the king, with his eyes swimming in tears, 
implored them to allow the Duke to embrace them in his 
presence, and to reassure him by that mark of friendship. 
He still continued to press them to give their word, while 
the two princes, more and more astonished by this extraordi- 
nary scene, still kept muttering what they could, but without 
promising anything definitely." 



172 SAINT SIMON. 

This remarkable scene had taken place while there was 
still every reasonable prospect of Louis being succeeded 
by his son or grandson. But the sudden death of two 
Dauphins had considerably narrowed the circle of direct 
heirs ; and in the event of the little child called the 
Duke of Anjou also dying, the crown of France would 
have gone to the Duke of Orleans. But this last enact- 
ment of 1710 had made it possible for the Duke of 
Maine to step in to the succession ; and it was the 
chance of this that filled up the measure of Saint 
Simon's indignation. He declared that for a king thus 
to degrade the sacred dignity of his crown by making 
the succession " despotically arbitrary," and to give to 
a bastard the privileges of a crown - prince, was " a 
crime and a sacrilege blacker, vaster, and more terrible 
than high treason itself." And after enumerating no 
less than fifty-seven successive stages by which Louis 
had extended the privileges of his natural children — 
" after reading this," Saint Simon concludes, " one will 
be less struck by the imagination of those poets who 
made the giants pile mountain upon mountain to scale 
the heavens." 

This may be so ; but what strikes an impartial ob- 
server most, after reading this violent invective, is, that 
it was Saint Simon himself who was piling Ossa on 
Pelion — or rather, making mountains of molehills — in 
such a display of exaggerated indignation ; as, after all, 
Louis was only exercising the right of adoption, which 
has been a recognised prerogative of monarchy since the 
days of the Eoman emperors, — it might almost be said, 
since the time of the patriarchs. Certainly, in the case 
of the Bourbons, as in the case of the Stuarts, the king's 



THE king's will. 173 

natural cliildren seem to have inherited more of the 
ancestral spirit than those born in the purple. Maine 
and his brother Toulouse were as superior in talent to 
Burgundy and Berry, as Monmouth and Berwick were 
to the unfortunate James II. or the still more unfor- 
tunate " Pretender." 

But Saint Simon's prejudices will not allow to 
Maine the possession of a single virtue. He was as 
false and unscrupulous, we are told, as Madame de 
Maintenon herself, and imposed upon Louis by an 
affected piety and simplicity, — " so little did the king 
realise what a rattlesnake he was cherishing in the 
bosom of his family." But even all that had been 
already done for Maine did not satisfy him or his 
friends, and some further official sanction was needed 
to secure his future sovereignty. Accordingly, Pere 
Tellier and Madame de Maintenon never rested, night 
and day, until by a sort of moral torture they had forced 
Louis to ratify with his own signature what Saint Simon 
calls " an enormous crime." They played upon his fears 
of poison, which had haunted him ever since the Duchess 
of Burgundy's death, and they made his life miserable 
to him, until at last he gave way. One morning the 
Procureur-General and the President of Parliament were 
summoned to Versailles, and the king solemnly handed 
them a document "sealed with seven seals." It was 
(he said with a weary sigh) his will, which he had been 
induced to sign as the price of his repose ; it would 
probably be set aside after his death, like the wills of 
his predecessors, but such as it was, they must take it 
and guard it safely : and now he trusted he should be 
allowed to die in peace. 



174 SAINT SIMON. 

The astonished Ministers took the will, and solemnly- 
deposited it, with all the security that iron bolts and 
doors could give, in a tower of the Palace of Justice 
at Paris. But though it had been so carefully sealed, 
its contents were generally known. Orleans was to be 
nominally Eegent ; but all real authority was to be 
vested in a council composed of the personal friends 
and adherents of Maine, who was himself to be the 
tutor and governor of the young king. 

But in spite of his prospects of future grandeur, 
Maine was by no means easy in his mind. Between 
the princes and the peers, he felt that he might be 
crushed at any moment. "The sword of Dionysius 
hung by a hair above his head," says Saint Simon, 
grandiloquently ; and his sense of insecurity made 
him seek allies on all sides. He first made overtures 
to the councillors in the Parliament, and then to the 
dukes, promising great things apparently to both, but, 
if we may believe Saint Simon, only with the intention 
of embroiling the two parties in a personal quarrel. He 
had bribed the Pirst President, he had cajoled the Par- 
liament, he had deceived the peers with the false pre- 
tence of taking their side ; but, after all, his perfidy had 
been found out. " He devoted himself to the powers 
of darkness, and the very powers of darkness would 
not receive him." Saint Simon had an interview with 
him, and spoke out his mind (if we may take his own 
account) with his customary freedom. 

"All at once, looking at him straight between the eyes — ' It 
is you, sir, who have engaged us [the dukes] in this affair, in 
spite of ourselves ; it is you avIio have answered for the king, 
for the First President, and for the Parliament ; and lastly, it 



THE DUKE OF MAINE. 175 

is you, sir, wlio have broken your word, and who have made 
us the plaything of the Parliament, and the laughing-stock 
of the world.' 

" The Duke of Maine, usually so fresh- coloured and so easy 
in manner, became silent, and pale as a corpse. He would 
have stammered out excuses, and expressed his regard for 
the dukes, and for me in particular. I listened to him 
without taking my eyes off his for a single moment ; and 
then, at last, fixing my eyes more and more intently on him, 
I interrupted him, and said in a high and haughty tone, but 
all the time tranquilly and without anger : ' Sir, you are 
all-powerful, — you show it both to us and to all France ; 
enjoy your power, and all that you have obtained: but' 
(raising my head and my voice, and looking into the very 
dejDths of his heart) 'sometimes occasions come when one 
repents too late of having abused one's power, and of hav- 
ing mocked and deceived in cold blood all the principal 
nobles of the realm, and this they will never forget.' 

" Thereupon I brusquely rose, and turned to go without 
giving him a moment for reply. The Duke of Maine, 
with an air of utter astonishment, and perhaps of vexation 
as well, followed me, still stammering out excuses and com- 
pliments. I continued to walk on, without turning my 
head, as far as the door. There I turned round, and said 
to him with an air of indignation: 'Oh sir! to escort me 
to the door after what has passed is to add mockery to 
insult.' At the same moment I passed through the door- 
way, and walked off without once looking behind me." 

The person whose interests were most affected by this 
" exaltation of the bastard " was undoubtedly the 
Duke of Orleans ; but Orleans, Avith his easy and care- 
less temper, was the last man to be personall}^ moved by 
it. He was to a certain extent conscious of the dangers 
surrounding him ; but it was difhcult to tell whom he 
could trust, or what steps he could take to strengthen 



176 SAINT SIMON. 

his position. Even his own wife was supposed to 
favour her brother's (Maine's) claims. "We are lost 
in a wood," he said to Saint Simon, " and cannot take 
too much care of ourselves." And then he tried to 
forget his anxieties in the dissipations of Saint Cloud 
and the Palais Eoyal. 

But, fortunately for him, his friends had more energy 
of character; and forward among them was his tutor, 
the Abbe Dubois, and, it need hardly be said, Saint 
Simon. They took decisive steps to rally their party 
round them. They secured on their side the great 
Marshals of France, the peers, the princes of the blood, 
the Jansenists, and many of the clergy, the Parliament, 
whose members had been slighted by Louis and duped 
by Maine, and lastly, the household troops — a picked 
body of ten thousand men — were to be kept in readi- 
ness, in case of a coup d'etat, that, like the Praetorian 
Guards of old, they might decide the fate of the empire 
with their swords. 

Frequent conferences of Orleans's friends were held, 
and their future policy discussed at length. As usual. 
Saint Simon was ready with a model constitution, much 
like the one he had before proposed to the young Duke 
of Burgundy. The Secretaries of State — " that tyranny 
of five kings " — were to be abolished, and a council of 
sixty was to take their place ; the nobility were to be 
reinstated in their ancient privileges ; the whole army of 
Government officials were to be sent about their busi- 
ness ; and as the only means of extricating the country 
from the enormous debts contracted during the late war, 
a national bankruptcy was to be declared at once, since, 
in a choice of eAals, it was better that the loss should 



THE king's illness. 177 

fall on the capitalists — "those voracious animals that 
had preyed upon the vitals of their country." 

Their opponents, Saint Simon thought, should be 
treated with toleration, except that " the bastards " 
should be deprived of their ill-gotten honours. As to 
the Jesuits, it would be sufficient if Pere Tellier was 
civilly dismissed to the college of La Fleche ; and if 
Lallemand and Doucin — " the firebrands of the plot and 
most dangerous scoundrels " — were shut up in Vincennes 
without pens, ink, or paper. As to Madame de Main- 
tenon, " there was nothing more to be feared from that 
fairy of nearly eighty ; her powerful and fatal wand had 
been broken, and she had once more become the widow 
Scarron." Eeyond allowing her personal liberty and a 
competence, all credit and consideration should be taken 
from her. She had deserved far worse treatment than 
this, both from the State and the Duke of Orleans. 

At last the event which both parties had .been so 
anxiously expecting came to pass. In the summer of 
1715 the king's health showed signs of rapid decline. 
His appetite, usually so good, began to fail him ; he lost 
flesh ; and it seemed that the diet of strong soups and 
spiced meats prescribed by his physician, followed by 
a quantity of fruits and sweetmeats, had impa:ired his 
digestive powers. His own courtiers noticed his changed 
appearance, and wagers were openly laid at the Hague 
and at St James's that he would not live another three 
weeks. Still Fagon, his physician, persisted that there 
was no real dangler. 

But on the 10th of August, as he was walking in the 
gardens of Yersailles, he suddenly staggered, and had to 
be carried into the palace, and his serious illness could 

F.O. X. M 



178 SAINT SIMON. 

no longer be concealed. Still he held his council and 
gave audience as usual, although it was noticed when he 
received the Persian ambassador, that he tottered under 
the weight of his robes. He even persisted in being 
carried to hear Mass, and was present at a concert in 
Madame cle Maintenon's room ; and, as he was being 
wheeled along one of the corridors, he met Madame de 
Saint Simon, wlio had been away from Court for a fort- 
night, and with his usual coiutesy stopped his chair 
and spoke to her : but she declared afterwards that she 
should hardly have recognised the king, so terribly had 
his appearance changed in the last ten days. 

On the 24th he dined in public for the last time, and 
was evidently growing weaker. But still he clung to 
life. On the Sunday the drums and hautboys were 
ordered to play as usual under his windows — for it was 
the Feast of Saint Louis — and his stringed band per- 
formed in the ante-chamber during dinner. But the 
same evening he was seized with a kind of fit, and his 
mind began to wander ; and so critical did his state 
appear to his doctors that Pere Tellier and the Cardinal 
de Eohan were hastily summoned to his room, and he 
made his last confession and received the last Sacra- 
ment. Immediately afterwards he added a codicil to 
his will. 

All day the galleries and ante-chambers were filled 
with a crowd of anxious courtiers, talking in low whis- 
pers, and trying to learn something from the valets and 
doctors who passed incessantly backwards and forwards 
from the room where the king was lying. His own 
dignity and presence of mind never left him. " Why 



THE KINGS DEATHBED. 179 

do you weep 1 " he said to some of the princesses ; " did 
you believe me to be immortal 1 Must I not pay to God 
the tribute of my life Avhich is His due 1 " He had a 
last interview with the Duke of Orleans, and then sum- 
moned the gentlemen of his household to bid them fare- 
well. With his usual grace of manner he thanked them 
all for their attachment and faithful services, and hoped 
they would be equally dutiful to the young king ; and 
seeing some of them shedding tears, he added : "I see 
that I have affected you, and I am also affected myself. 
It is time for us to part. Adieu, gentlemen ! I trust 
you will think of me sometimes." 

" Then he ordered the little Dauphin to be brought to his 
bedside : ' My child, you are going to be a great king. Do 
not imitate me in the taste I have had for building and for 
war ; strive, on the contrary, to be at peace with all your 
neighbours. Eender to God what is His due ; remember 
the obligations you are under to Him, and cause your sub- 
jects to honour Him. Follow good counsels, and try to 
be a comfort to your people, which I unfortunately have 
never been myself. Remember all that you owe to Madame 
de Ventadour'" (the governess). 

He took the boy in his arms and embraced him ten- 
derly. " My dear child, I give you my blessing with all 
my heart ! " — more than once shedding tears himself — 
and the poor little prince (he was scarcely five years old) 
was then carried away by his governess, weeping bitterly. 
Then Louis turned to Madame de Maintenon, and, 
pressing her hand, said, " What consoles me most of all 
is the hope that we may soon meet again ! " " But this 
tender compliment," says Saint Simon, " displeased this 



180 SAINT SIMON. 

ancient fairy, who, not content with being queen, appa- 
rently wished to be immortal as well," At the time, 
indeed, she made no reply, but afterwards remarked to 
her servant, IS'anon — " A fine rendezvous he has given 
me ! This man has never loved any one but himself ! " 
And then she ordered her carriage and drove off to 
Saint Cyr. 

The approaching death of the king had emptied the 
corridors and galleries of Versailles, and all the courtiers 
had thronged the rooms of the Duke of Orleans. But 
suddenly a rumour came that the king had rallied, and 
back they all rushed at once to the royal apartments. 
Orleans was amused at this trait of human nature. 
" My dear duke," he said to Saint Simon, who came to 
see him in his solitude, " you are the first person I 
have seen to-day ; " and he added, laughingly, " If the 
king eats again, we shall see nobody but ourselves." 

The doctors had brought Louis an elixir, said to be 
of marvellous efficacy, which a countryman had per- 
suaded them to give him, " Sire, it will restore you to 
life." " I neither desire nor hope to live," replied the 
king, and he drank the potion with indifference — " for 
life or for death," he said, " as it shall please God." 
The drug, whatever its secret virtues were, seemed to 
arrest for a time the progress of the disease ; but the relief 
was only temporary, and the gangrene, which had already 
shown itself in his limbs, spread upwards, and gradually 
paralysed his system. He was now conscious only at 
intervals, and it was seen that death must be very near, 
" You can go," said the confessor to Madame de Main- 
tenon, who had been hastily summoned from Saint Cyr 



THE king's death. 181 

— " you are no longer necessary to him ; " and she ac- 
cordingly left Versailles for the last time.^ 

The king's calmness, in the intervals when he was 
conscious, seemed extraordinary even to his physicians. 
Was it, as they suggested, that his malady had deadened 
all mental as well as bodily sensation ; or was it, as 
others supposed, that he had been affiliated to the 
Order of the Jesuits, and that the " plenary benedic- 
tion " he received from them had soothed and tranquil- 
lised his spirit ? 

The prayers for the dying were now said over him, 
and he joined in the responses with a voice still so 
strong and clear that it was heard above the voices 
of the priests around him. Then, as his sufferings 
grew more terrible, he was heard repeating incessantly 
to himself : " Nunc et in Jiorcl moi^tis — Have pity on 
me, my God ! come to my aid ! hasten to succour 
me ! " These were his last audible words. All that 
night he still lingered on in his last agony, and it was 
not till past eight o'clock on the^ following morning 
that death at length released him. The Jesuit, who had 
never left his bedside, placed a crucifix on his breast ; 
an officer in attendance stopped the palace clock at the 
fatal moment ; a herald threw open the windows of the 
chamber, stepped out upon the balcony, and, in accord- 
ance with immemorial custom, thrice proclaimed, "ie 



1 M. Theophile Lavallee — Madame de Maintenon's most ardent 
apologist — wishes us to believe that she left the bedside of the king, 
when almost in the agonies of death, "for fear that the emotion 
caused by the sight of her tears might prejudice his health" ! — Famille 
d'Aubigne, p. 468. 



182 SAINT SIMON. 

roi est mort ; " and a faint response came back from a 
few bystanders in the courtyard below, " Vive le roi ! " 

Thus, in his seventy -seventh year, after the most 
eventful reign in French history — a reign of so much 
glory and so much obloquy — the great king went to his 
rest at last. " He had survived," says Saint Simon, 
" all his sons and grandsons, except the King of Spain. 
France had never seen a reign so long or a king so old." 



183 



CHAPTEE XIY. 



THE REGENT. 



As if repenting at having given ns this touching pic- 
ture of the king's death, Saint Simon goes on to say, that 
excepting his valets, the Ministers, and Government 
officials — " in fact what may be called the canaille " — 
no one felt his loss. " Paris and the provinces breathed 
again, and leaped for joy. The people, ruined, over- 
whelmed, and desperate, gave thanks to God with a scan- 
dalous delight for a deliverance that exceeded theh most 
ardent expectations." His body was carried to Saint 
Denis with the slightest possible pomp and ceremony ; 
no tears were shed, and there was no public mourning. 

The Parliament was summoned the next day; and 
the chamber was tlu"onged by peers and councillors with 
anxious and expectant faces — the Duke of Maine among 
them, " bursting with joy," smiling and self-satisfied — 
while through the open doors were seen crowds of 
curious spectators and files of guards who had been 
ordered to line the avenues. The king's will was read, 
and then Orleans made a spirited speech in vindication 
of his rights — alluding with a marked emphasis to 
" those who had dared to make profit of the feebleness 



184 SAINT SIMON. 

of a dying king." Fleury and D'Aguesseau eloquently- 
supported liim ; and after a warm discussion, and an 
adjournment of the meeting, it ended (as Louis had him- 
self foretold) in Orleans being declared Eegent with 
full powers by a unanimous vote, while Maine was 
stripped of all authority, and every clause favourable 
to his claims found in the will was at once set aside. 
Even at this very meeting, when the future Govern- 
ment of the kingdom was at stake, Saint Simon's " small 
shrill voice " was heard protesting as to the rights of the 
dukes to remain covered when they addressed the Par- 
liament (affaire du honnet). " It was," he declared," their 
most peculiar, most cherished, and most just prerogative!" 

Public affairs during the king's minority were to be 
carried on by seven Councils — answering very much 
to our Public Departments, except that there was one 
of " Conscience " specially devoted to Church matters. 
Each council consisted of seven members ; and above 
them all was that of the Eegency, of which Saint 
Simon was himself a member. But these Councils 
had a brief existence, and within two years' time they 
were all abolished, with the exception of the Regent's 
select advisers. 

Even more than either Alcibiades or Buckingham, the 
Regent was "all mankind's epitome." Two opposite 
natures seemed to be constantly struggling in him for 
the mastery, and his mother the Prmcess of Bavaria 
described this medley of good and evil in a well-known 
fable — " All the fairies had come to his birth, and each 
of them had given her son some talent, so that he 
possessed them all. But unluckily they had forgotten 
to invite one old fairy, who had disappeared for so 



THE EEGENT. 185 

long that no one had thought of her. She came at 
last, leaning on her little wand, after the others had 
each made her present to the child ; and, growing more 
and more incensed at the neglect, she avenged herself 
by making all the talents given by the others absolutely 
worthless, and though he retained them all, none of 
them helped him in the least degree."^ Saint Simon, 
who had known the Eegent from boyhood, thoroughly 
confirms this character of him. He was an accom- 
plished painter and musician, yet a drunken supper- 
party afforded the pleasantest sights, and sounds to him ; 
he had a taste for science and chemistry, yet would 
waste hours in foolish magical experiments ; he had 
learning, eloquence, and a marvellous memory for facts 
and dates, yet surpassed even his own roues ^ of the 
Palais Royal in ribaldry and profanity ; he was ami- 
able, kind-hearted, and generous, yet " neither grace nor 
justice could be got from him except by working on his 
fears ; " he was brave almost to rashness in the field, but 
was destitute of any moral courage, timid, irresolute, and 
incurably lazy in all matters except pleasure. 

Louis knew his nephew's character as well as Saint 
Simon ; and once, when Marechal, his surgeon, was 
talking of Orleans's various accomplishments, and said 
that, if the prince had to work for his living, he would 
find five or six ways of getting it — " Yes," said Louis, 
"my nephew is all you have just said. He is a braggart 



1 Macaulay has applied this fable to Lord Byron's character in a 
well-known passage of his Essays. 

2 Orleans himself applied this word to his boon companions, — men 
who deserved to be "broken on the wheel" — or, as we might say, 
for whom hanging was too good. 



186 SAINT SIMON. 

\ 
of imaginary crimes" (" c^est un fanfaron des crimes"). 
I was quite amazed, says Saint Simon, at such a grand 
stroke of description coming from the king's mouth. 

Saint Simon dwells at some length upon the mingled 
vein of superstition and scepticism in the character of 
Orleans, wlio was too clever, he says, to be an atheist, 
although he pretended to be one ; and who, if a dan- 
gerous illness had attacked him, "would have thrown 
himself into the hands of all the priests and capuchins 
in Paris." But his great desire was " to raise the devil 
and make him speak," and for this purpose he would 
pass whole nights in the quarries of Yaugirard, uttering 
spells and invocations. Once while he was in this mood 
a clairvoyancer came to Paris, and brought with him a 
little girl who professed to see the future in a glass of 
water. Orleans invited them to the Palais Royal, ^nd 
after testing the young girl's powers of prophecy with 
various questions, he at last asked her to describe what 
would happen at the king's death. (It should be noted 
that he told all this to Saint Simon in a conversation nine 
years before the king actually died.) 

" She looked in the glass of water, and told him at some 
length all she saw. She accurately described the king's 
room at Versailles, aud the furniture in it, precisely as it 
was when he died. She gave an exact picture of the king 
as he lay in his bed, and of everybody standing up close to 
the bed or in the room — a little child wearing a blue order, 
held in the arms of Madame de Ventadour — and at seeing 
her the girl uttered a cry of recognition, for she had seen her 
at Mademoiselle de Sery's. She then made them recognise 
Madame de Maintenon, and the singular figure of Fagonji 



1 Fagon, the physician, was bent nearly double with age and rheu- 
matism. 



CLAIRVOYANCE. 187 

Madame the Duchess of Orleans, Madame la Duchesse, the 
Princess of Conti : she again cried ont as she saw the Duke 
of Orleans — in a word, she made them recognise by her 
description all the princes and servants, the nobles and the 
valets, whom she saw around the bed. When she had told 
everything she saw, the Duke of Orleans, surprised that she 
had not described to them Monseigneur, or the Duke and the 
Duchess of Burgundy, or the Duke of Berry, asked her if 
she did not see figures of such and such an appearance. But 
she persistently declared that she did not, and described 
over again those that she actually did see. This is what the 
Duke of Orleans could not understand, and what astonished 
him extremely then as it did me, and we vainly sought to 
discover what it meant. The event explained it all. We 
were then in 1706. All these four princes were at that time 
full of life and health, and all four were dead before the 
king's death. It was. the same with M. le Prince, M. le Due, 
and with the Prince de Conti — none of whom the little girl 
saw in the glass, though she saw the children of the two last 
named, as well as M. du Maine, his children, and the Count 
of Toulouse. But, till the event took place, all this was left 
in obscurity. 

"After thus satisfying his curiosity, the Duke of Orleans 
wished to know what his own fate was to be. But liothing 
more could be seen in the glass. Then the man, who was there, 
offered to show the Duke his own figure painted as it were 
upon the wall of the room, provided that he was not afraid 
of seeing it there ; and in about a quarter of an hour, after 
the man had gone through some gesticulations before them 
all, the figure of the Duke of Orleans, clothed as he was 
then and large as life, suddenly appeared upon the wall as 
though in a picture, with a crown upon his head. This 
crown was not that of France, nor that of Spain, nor that 
of England, nor that of any empire. The Duke, who gazed 
at it with all his eyes, could not divine its nature. He had 
never seen one like it. It had only four circles, and nothing 
on its summit. This crown covered the head of the figure. 

" I take the opportunity [Saint Simon concludes] to show 



188 SAINT SIMON. 

from the obscurity of these two prophecies, the vanity of 
this sort of curiosity, the just deceit of the devil which God 
allows in order to punish the curiosity which He forbids — 
the clouds and darkness which result from it, in place of 
the light and satisfaction sought for. Orleans was then a 
long way from being Regent of the kingdom, or from even 
dreaming of such a thing ! Yet this it was perhaps that 
this singular kind of crown announced to him. All this 
took place in Paris, at the house of his mistress, in presence 
of their most intimate circle of friends, on the very evening 
before the day on w^hich he told me of it, and I thought the 
story so extraordinary that I have given it a place here, — not 
in the way of approval, but as a simple statement of fact." 

Any virtuous instincts that Orleans niiglit have origin- 
ally possessed had been hopelessly perverted by the fatal 
influence of his tutor Dubois. This man had practised 
on the facile nature of his pupil, and instilled into his 
heart "an execrable poison." He taught him to disbe- 
lieve in the very existence of moral principle ; to regard 
virtue and vice as mere conventional fictions dressed up 
by priests; that "honour in men and chastity in women 
were chimeras, and had no real existence in any one, 
except in a few poor slaves of prejudice," and that in his 
natural heart every man was vile and wicked. Orleans 
used occasionally to rally Saint Simon on his superior 
virtue, as being an old-fashioned complaint that he ought 
to have got over in his childhood ; and he certainly did 
his best to show that he was not himself hampered by 
any such lingering sentiments of morality. " The more 
debauched a man was," we are told, " the rnore he 
esteemed him." His most outrageous orgies were pur- 
posely celebrated on the holiest days of the year, and his 
most familiar friends were selected from the most profi- 



THE regent's life. 189 

cient graduates in vice. Their mean origin was rather a 
recommendation in his eyes, for he had a thorough con- 
tempt for nobles of his own rank, — in fact, he thought 
they were, if possible, more easily bought and sold than 
the rest of mankind ; and he was disposed to agTee with 
his mistress, Madame de Sabran, who declared that "God 
at the creation had taken what was left of the clay, and 
made of it the souls of princes and lackeys." 

But Orleans was something more than a man of plea- 
sure. Up till five o'clock in the day he was the Eegent, 
and, as such, devoted himself to public business. He 
presided at his council, consulted with his colleagues, 
dictated to his secretaries, received ambassadors ; at two 
o'clock he took his chocolate, for he never dined, and 
then paid visits or entertained visitors up till five. After 
that hour he considered himself absolved from official 
cares, and rushed off like an emancijjated schoolboy to 
the Luxembourg or Palais Eoyal, where he amused him- 
self for the rest of the evening. " I was never present," 
says Saint Simon, " at one of his suppers. . . . They 
were scenes of unbridled licence ; and when the guests 
were very drunk and had made a good deal of noise, they 
went to bed, to begin the same game again the next day." 
Yet in his wildest moments Orleans never let a State secret 
escape him, and the most favoured of his mistresses was 
never admitted to his confidence. He treated them all, 
we are told, just as they deserved to be treated — giving 
them little power and very little money. Whatever the 
Eegent's follies might have been, he was not to be too 
easily duped by a Maintenon or a Pompadour. 

One generous act of the Eegent, in the early days of 
his power, deserves to be recorded. He sent for the list 



190 SAINT SIMON. 

of all the lettres de cachet issued during the last reign — 
the number has been computed at something like thirty 
thousand — went carefully through the names of those 
imprisoned in the Bastille, and restored them all to lib- 
erty, excepting such as were charged with treason or 
grave offences. 

Among the poor wretches thus set free was one un- 
happy man who had come from Italy, an entire stranger 
to France, some thirty years before, and who had been 
arrested by the police the moment he set foot in Paris, 
and thrown into the Bastille* ISTo one knew his offence ; 
no record of any crime appeared against him in the prison 
books ; and the officials themselves believed " it was a 
mistake." 

"When bis liberty was announced to him, he sadly asked 
what he could do with it. He had not, he said, a farthing 
in the world— he did not know a soul in Paris — not even 
the name of a single street, nor a person in all France. His 
relations were probably dead, and his property divided among 
strangers, during his long absence. He did not know what 
he could do with himself if set free, and he begged, to be 
allowed to remain in the Bastille for the rest of his days, 
with food and lodging. This favour was granted him." 

Orleans would also have recalled the Huguenots, and 
repaired, if he could, some of the mischief caused by 
that signal act of tyranny which had banished them 
from France. But, strange to say. Saint Simon strongly 
opposed such a measure — though on political, not on re- 
ligious, grounds. There would be another League, he 
declared, and probably another civil war, if these exiles 
were allowed to return. 

The embarrassed state of the finances was the chief 



law's scheme. 191 

difficulty with wliich the Eegent had to deal. The 
national debt amounted to more than £120,000,000 in 
English money, Avhile there was not more than ,£30,000 
of available cash in the Treasury. Various expedients 
for raising money were adopted. An edict was passed 
to control and liquidate some of the floating debt : a 
Chamber of Finance was appointed, and the capitalists 
had to disgorge part of their gains j and then the value- 
of the gold louis was raised, and the coinage practically 
debased. When matters seemed most hopeless, a Scotch- 
man, named Law, proposed a highly tempting scheme to 
the Eegent. "Without tax, without additional expense, 
without trouble or danger to any one, money, he de- 
clared, was to double itself and circulate rapidly through 
the country, by the simple expedient of putting it mto his 
bank, and receiving the equivalent in paper notes. The 
Kegent caught at the idea : a ]^[ational Bank was estab- 
lished, and shares in it were eagerly sought for, while 
the paper notes issued by it at once rose to a premium. 

But, as Saint Simon sagaciously asked, how was this 
paper currency to be regulated 1 Such a system as Law's 
might answer in a limited monarchy: but France was not 
like England ; and " the expense of a war, the rapacity of 
a Minister, a favourite, or a mistress, would soon exhaust 
the bank, and ruin the holders of notes." ISTor did the 
Parliament view the scheme with any favour. They re- 
fused to ratify the Eegent's edict, which authorised the 
purchase of Law's bank by the State; and they even 
threatened to hang Law himself in front of the Palais 
de Justice. But their remonstrances were quietly over- 
ruled. 

In 1717, Law started the Mississippi Company — as 



192 SAINT SIMON. 

wild and illusory a scheme as the South Sea Bubble 
itself. Magnificent promises were held out to the share- 
holders — unlimited wealth from the gold - mines of 
Louisiana, and a monopoly of French commerce. The 
shares at once went up to twenty times their value ; 
enormous fortunes were made in a few hours ; paper 
notes were issued in ceaseless abundance ; and Law's 
offices, in the narrow Eue de Quincampoix, were thronged 
night and day by eager speculators. " He lived in a state 
of siege," says Saint Simon, "and saw people clamber 
in through his windows from the garden, or drop down 
the chimney into his private room. Men only talked of 
millions." 

Saint Simon himself was sceptical both as to the bank 
and the company, and he refused to take a share in either 
one or the other. " Since the days of Midas," he said, 
"no one before this Scotchman had ever been gifted 
with the power of turning what he touched into gold ; 
and this skilful jugglery, which put Peter's money into 
Paul's pocket, must, sooner or later, end in utter ruin." 
It was even as he anticiparted. The foolish prodigality 
of the Eegent, and the extravagant amount of paper- 
money issued by Law, produced their natural conse- 
quences. There was a vague susf^ion, a panic, a run 
upon the bank ; the Prince of Conti alone carried off 
three waggon-loads of gold, instead of paper, in an after- 
noon : then every one tried to realise money in place of 
his notes before the crash came — and then the bubble 
burst. In spite of every effort made by the Eegent to 
bolster up the system, even going so far as to confiscate 
all the gold and jewellery found in private houses. Law's 
notes were found to be waste paper; eighty thousand 



THE EEGENT. 193 

families were ruined, and, amidst the general distress and 
consternation, Law himself escaped from France. 

Strangely enough. Saint Simon does not blame this 
adventurer. " There was neither avarice nor roguery in 
his composition," he tells us. " He was the dupe of his 
own Mississippi scheme. . . . He reasoned like an 
Englishman — not knowing how opposed to the spirit of 
commerce is the frivolity of the French nation, their 
inexperience, and their greediness to enrich themselves 
by one lucky stroke." 

It may be doubted if Saint Simon played quite the 
important part under the Regency that he had pictured 
to himself. He was, no doubt, one of Orleans's oldest 
and most trusted friends; but then Orleans was keen- 
sighted and suspicious to the last degree. He only 
laughed at Saint Simon's warmth and impetuosity ; he 
ridiculed the pretensions of " the dukes ; " he turned off 
the most serious questions with some buffoonery ; and, if 
he could not otherwise escape, he trifled and temporised, 
or made promises that were never kept. 

But, in spite of many disappointments. Saint Simon 
enjoyed some days of signal triumph ; and among them 
may be reckoned that on which the Regent was at last 
persuaded to take heart of grace, summon a Bed of 
Justice, and " humble the arrogance of the Parliament, 
and strip the false plumage from the king's bastard 
children." 

Maine, whose degradation was the special object of 
this Bed of Justice, seems to have offered a passive 
resistance ; but his wife showed more spirit than her 
husband, and declared she would set fire to the four 
corners of the kingdom sooner than give up his rights. 

F.C. — X. N 



194 SAINT SIMON. 

She was an imperious, self-willed, fantastic little per- 
sonage — small in stature, like all the Condes, but with 
a restless and volatile temperament. She reigned at 
Sceaux like a queen of Lilliput, giving endless fetes and 
entertainments — now acting " Athalie," and now study- 
ing astronomy or reading Greek with the " learned 
Malezieux." She turned the night into day, and spent 
her husband's money in the most reckless fashion. 
" But he never dared say a word," says Saint Simon, 
"for fear of her going quite mad; as it was, she was 
more than half crazed." 

For the present, however, she gave up her plea- 
sures to search all the old chronicles she could find 
to prove from history that the natural sons of kings 
were as good as princes of the blood-royal ; and Madame 
de Staal tells us how she found the Duchess half buried 
under a pile of huge folios, " like Enceladus under 
Etna," and how laboriously she examined them with 
the assistance of some distinguished antiquaries. But, 
as her friend observes, these savants probably knew 
more about the customs of the Chaldeans than of the 
Court of Versailles, and precedents taken from the family 
of Nimrod would scarcely apply to the family of Louis 
XIV. 

But all the antiquaries in the world could not have 
averted the inevitable humiliation of Maine. His 
enemy. Saint Simon, had been working night and day, 
arranging the details of the Bed of Justice where the 
sentence of degradation was to be formally pronounced ; 
and he tells us of " the rosy thoughts," — " the sweet 
and unalloyed delight of the prospect." 

At last the fatal day dawned, " so immeasurably and 



HUMILIATION OF "THE BASTARDS." 195 

perseveringly desired," when the insults and indignities 
of a lifetime were to be wiped away in one supreme 
hour of revenge. Every step had been taken to guard 
against the possibility of resistance. The household 
troops were under arms, and the approaches to the 
Tuileries were lined by Swiss guards and musketeers. 
The Eegent's Council met, and without even putting the 
question to the vote, two decrees were read — the first 
annulling a recent enactment of the Parliament on a 
question of finance, and the second depriving Maine 
of his rank and honours as a prince, and reducing 
him to the position of a simple duke. And then the 
Parliament were summoned in their turn to hear these 
sentences of humiliation. Saint Simon feasted his eyes 
on the spectacle of their astonishment and impotent 
indignation. 

" This was the moment when I relished, with a delight 
utterly impossible to express in words, the sight of these 
haughty legislators, who had dared to refuse us the sahita- 
tion, prostrate on their knees, and rendering at our feet a 
homage to the throne, while we (the peers) were seated, with 
our heads covered, at the side of the same throne. It is this 
situation and these postures that alone plead, with the most 
piercing evidence, the cause of those who, in very truth and 
reality, are the king's right-hand men {laterales regis), and 
opposed to these representatives {vas electum) of the Third 
Estate. My eyes, fixed and glued upon these haughty bour- 
geois, scanned all these grand gentlemen of the bar, as they 
knelt or stood, with the ample folds of their fur robes — paltry 
rabbits' fur, that tried to imitate ermine — swaying to and fro 
at each long and redoubled genuflexion, that only ceased when 
the king gave his orders through the Keeper of the Seals, and 
these heads uncovered and humiliated on a level with our 
feet. 



196 SAINT SIMON. 

" When the President of Parliament had finished his remon- 
strances, the Keeper of the Seals ascended the steps to the 
throne, and then, without asking further advice, returned to 
his place, looked at the President, and said, ' The king wishes 
to he obeyed, and to he oheyed at once.' This grand speech was 
a thunder-stroke that confounded the presidents and coun- 
cillors in the most wonderful way. They all bowed their 
heads, and it was long before the majority raised them 
again." 

But there was even a greater triumph to come. The 
second decree, which placed Maine at the bottom of 
the list of dukes, and deprived him of all his privileges, 
including his office of governor to the king, was read and 
registered, to the consternation of his friends. 

" The Chief President, stunned by the last blow, made such 
a surprisingly long face, that I thought his chin had fallen 
on his knees. . . . But all the while I was myself dying of 
joy. I was so oppressed that I feared I should faint : my 
heart, dilated to excess, found no room to beat. The violence 
I did myself in order to let nothing escape me was infinite ; 
yet nevertheless this torment was delicious, I compared the 
years and time of my ser"\dtude, — those hateful days when, 
dragged like a victim at the wdieels of the Parliament, I had 
so many times adorned the triumph of the bastards — those 
various degrees by which they had mounted to this height 
above our heads, — I compared them, I say, to this court of 
justice and of arbitration — to this their frightful disgrace, 
which, at the same time, raised us, the peers, by the force of 
the counter-shock. ... I thanked and congratulated my- 
self that it was through me that all this had been done. I 
thought of the dazzling splendour of such a revenge in the 
presence of the king and so august an assemblage. I was 
triumphant, — I was avenging myself,' — I swam in the delights 
of vengeance. I enjoyed to the full the accomplishment of 
the most ardent and most continuous desires of my life." 



THE CZAK IN PARIS. 197 

The Duke of Maine bore his humiliation with his 
usual coolness ; but the Duchess was furious when she 
heard of it. "All that is left me is the disgrace of hav- 
ing married you," she said bitterly to her husband ; and 
when ordered to give up her rooms at the Tuileries, in 
her passion she broke the Tvdndows, the china, and every- 
thing she could lay her hands on. Then, to revenge 
herself, she engaged in a foolish conspiracy with Spain 
to depose the Eegent. Her letters were intercepted, 
and both she and her husband, with many of their 
friends, were arrested and imprisoned for some months, 
until Orleans, with his. careless good-nature, released and 
f ojgave them all. 

Paris received an illustrious visitor in 1717 — the Czar, 
Peter the Great. Saint Simon, who " stared at him for 
an hour, without taking his eyes off him," was much 
impressed by his commanding presence and " unmistak- 
able air of greatness," although he notices the curious 
spasm that every now and then distorted his face and 
gave him " a wild and terrible look." Everything was 
done by the Eegent to entertain his imperial guest. 
Splendid rooms were prepared for him at the Louvre, 
which, however, the Czar found too splendid for comfort : 
there was a parade of the household troops ; a hunt at 
Pontainebleau ; a Court ball, and a grand opera, where 
the Czar scandalised the audience by calling for beer, 
and drinking it in the royal box. He was impatient of 
State ceremonies, and liked nothing better than to wander 
about Paris unattended, talk to the workmen employed 
on the revolving bridge, taste the soldiers' soup at the 
Invalides, and drive from one end of the town to the 
other in a hackney-coach. If we may believe Saint 



108 ^SAINT SIMON. 

Simon, he showed himself a true Eussian in his taste for 
strong liquors. He drank a bottle or two of beer, and 
the same quantity of wine, at dinner, and " a quart of 
brandy afterwards, by way of liqueur." His suite ate and 
drank even more than their master; and the chaplain, 
like a worthy son of the Church, " consumed half as 
much again as the rest of the suite." In other respects, 
their filthy habits made them as unwelcome visitors in 
Paris as afterwards at Evelyn's house at Deptford. 

After a visit of six weeks, the Czar left Paris, greatly 
delighted with all he had seen, but much troubled in 
mind by the excessive luxury of the Court, which he 
prophesied must, sooner or later, bring ruin on the 
country. 



199 



CHAPTER XV. 



CAEDINAL DUBOIS. 



It was Saint Simon's fate, up to the last hour of his 
political life, to be thwarted and overruled by the man 
whom, of all others, his soul most abhorred, yet who 
was not only the most able politician of his day, but had 
considerably more influence with the Eegent than Saint 
Simon hunself : in fact, he had made himself " his 
master's master." His other biographers (Capefigue 
, alone excepted) represent Dubois as having been, in actual 
life, much what he is said to be in these Memoirs — 
"soft, supple, cringing, a flatterer and false admirer, 
. . . with falsehood written on his brow; immea- 
surably depraved in morals, . . . despising and 
deriding good faith, honour, probity, and truth." ^ 

So much may be granted ; but when Saint Simon says 
that " he was destitute of all talent," and that " his 

1 One evening, when the Prince Regent was dining at Holland 
House, the conversation turned upon the question as to who was the 
wickedest man that ever lived. "The Eegent Orleans, and he was 
a 'prince" said Sydney Smith, looking at the Prince Regent. " I 
should have given the preference to his tutor, the Abbe Dubois, and 
he was a priest, Mr Sydney," was the quiet rebuke of his Royal 
Highness. 



200 SAINT SIMON. 

capacity was nil" it is clear that in this case, as in 
other instances, he has failed to distinguish between the 
moral and intellectual qualities of the enemy whom he 
thus mercilessly assails. The abilities of Dubois are as 
notorious as his profligacy. He had considerable hu- 
mour, learning, and knowledge of men and books ; a taste 
for letters and science ; great powers of application ; and 
had shown singular firmness and dexterity in his defeat 
of Cellamare's conspiracy, and in the negotiations which 
resulted in the Quadruple Alliance. But this triumph 
of diplomacy was an additional crime in Saint Simon's 
eyes. He was himself a Jacobite at heart, and it was 
with bitter indignation that he saw the Eegent sacri- 
fice the Stuart cause which Louis XIV. would never 
give up, even in his heaviest reverses, while the un- 
fortunate son of James II. had a price put upon his 
head, and was forced to seek an asylum in Eome. ^ 
Saint Simon fretted and fumed at this English alliance. 
Both Dubois and the Eegent, he declared, were "too 
much the humble servants of the house of Hanover;" 
but he accounts for their apostasy from the traditional 
policy of France by the "Anglomania" of the prince, and 
the heavy annual pension paid by the English Cabinet 
to the Minister. 

"Every ecclesiastic," says Saint Simon, "who once 
succeeds in getting a footing in the government of his 
country — however base his origin— makes it his sole 
object in life to become a Cardinal, and is ready to 
sacrifice everything unreservedly to this end." Dubois 

1 There are two letters preserved among the manuscripts in the 
British Museum from "Jacques, Roy," to "my cousin, the Duke of 
Saint Simon," dated from Albano in 1721. 



DUBOIS. LiJl 

soon began to mount the steps of this ladder, and one 
mornuig he told the Eegent that he had just had " a 
pleasant dream of being Archbishop of Cambray," — the 
see being then vacant. Even Orleans was scandalised 
at the proposal, for, putting aside the question of his 
profligate life, Dubois was not even in holy orders. 
" Make a scoundrel like you archbishop ! Where will 
you find another scoundrel who will consecrate you?" 
Dubois assured him that there would be no difficulty — 
in fact, the man was in the next room : his own chap- 
lain, the Archbishop of Eheims, would do all that was 
necessary. The Eegent reluctantly gave his consent, 
and Dubois was ordained deacon and priest at the same 
service, and shortly afterwards he was actually con- 
secrated archbishop. 

He showed no false modesty on the occasion; and 
when one of his colleagues sneered at the appointment 
with what Saint Simon calls "pathetic malignity," 
Dubois justified himself by the precedent of Saint Am- 
brose, who had been consecrated archbishop even before 
he was baptised. " I was so horror-stricken at such pro- 
fanity," says Saint Simon, " that I rushed to the door of 
the room, that I might hear no more." He implored 
Orleans, by all that was most sacred, not to attend the 
consecration, as it would be a mockery to God and an 
insidt to the Church ; and Orleans faithfully promised 
that nothing should induce him to be present. But the 
first thing Saint Simon heard the next morning was 
that the Eegent had set off in full state, with his usual 
escort, for the church where the consecration was to 
take place. One of his mistresses had persuaded him 
to change his mind even in that short interval. 



202 SAINT SIMON. 

■ Once made archbishop, Dubois began to move heaven 
and earth to obtain a cardinal's hat. He entreated, 
promised, and bribed in all directions, even getting the 
Pretender, as well as George I., to support his claims. 
The Eegent, with his usual mconsistency, first declared 
"he would throw the little impudent rascal into the 
lowest dungeon if he should venture even to think of 
such a thing," and the next day told Torcy to write to 
Eome in Dubois's favour. 

Fortunately for the Eegent's candidate, the new Pope, 
Innocent XIIL, happened to be a Frenchman (Conti); 
and in 1721, after expending an incredible sum in bribes, 
Dubois was at last made happy with the red hat ; but, 
as he complacently said, " what he valued far more than 
the Eoman purple was the empressement shown by all 
the European sovereigns in procuring it for him." 

If we may believe Saint Simon, Dubois's new dignity 
as a prince of the Church made not the least difference 
in his manners or language. 

" One morning he could not find something he wanted, and 
began to rage and swear at his clerks, saying, that if there 
were not enough of them, he would engage forty or fifty or 
a hundred more, and making the most frightful noise. His 
secretary, Verrier, listened to him tranquilly, and the Car- 
dinal asked him if it was not a horrible thing to be so badly 
used, considering the expense he had been put to ; and then 
he flew into a fresh fit of passion, and insisted upon Verrier's 
answering him. 

" ' Monseigneur,' said Verrier, ' take one more clerk, and 
let his only employment be to swear and storm for you, and 
all will go well. You will have much more time for other 
matters, and you will be much better served.' 

" The Cardinal began to laugh, and was appeased." 



CARDINAL DUBOIS. 203 

We may select one more out of the many anecdotes 
which Saint Simon tells us of Dubois, and then we may 
leave his Eminence. 

Madame de Conflans, governess to the Eegent's chil- 
dren, was persuaded, much against her will, that she 
ought to pay a complimentary visit to Dubois on his 
new accession of dignity. 

" She arrived at Versailles just as people were leaving din- 
ner, and was shown into a large room where there were eight 
or ten persons waiting to speak to the Cardinal, who was 
standing near the fireplace with some woman, to whom he 
was giving a taste of the rough side of his tongue. Fear 
seized Madame de Conflans, who was but small, and looked 
even smaller than she was. Still, she timidly ajjproached 
as this woman retired. The Cardinal, seeing her advance, 
asked her sharply what she wanted. 

" ' Monseigneur ! ' said she ; ' oh, Monseigneur 

" ' Monseigneur ! ' interrupted the Cardinal ; ' come, it can't 
be done.' 

" ' But, Monseigneur ' she said again. 

^' 'By all that's infernal!' interrupted the Cardinal again, 
* I tell you once more, as I told you just now, it can't be 
done.' 

" ' Monseigneur ' Madame de Conflans began again, 

wishing to explain that she wanted nothing ; but at this 
word the Cardinal seized her by the shoulders, twirled her 
round, gave her a thump on the back, and pushed her out. 

" ' Go to the devil ! ' said he, ' and leave me in peace.' 

" She thought she should have fallen flat on the ground, 
and rushed away in a fur}^, shedding hot tears, and arrived 
in this state at the Duchess of Orleans's house, to whom she 
told her story as well as her sobs would allow her. 

"People were so accustomed to these wild freaks of the 
Cardinal, and this was thought so singular and amusing, 



204 SAINT SIMON. 

that the recital of it caused shouts of laughter, which com- 
pletely crushed the poor Conflans, who made a solemn vow 
she would never again set foot inside this madman's house." 

In 1721, two marriages were arranged to cement the 
alliance between France and Spain. The young king 
was betrothed to the Infanta (then of the mature age 
of three) ; and the Prince of the Asturias, the heir-appa- 
rent of Spain, was to marry the Eegent's daughter, 
Mdlle. de Montpensier. A special ambassador was to 
be sent on the occasion, to demand formally the hand 
of the Infanta and to sign the marriage - contract ; and 
Saint Simon easily persuaded Orleans to nominate him 
for this important mission. His only object in going, 
he is careful to add, was to secure the rank of Grandee 
for his second son, and possibly the order of the Golden 
Fleece for the eldest. "I so thought to do a good 
stroke of business for my family, and to return home 
in great content." 

His journey, which took him about three weeks, is 
described with his usual humour and vivacity ; and from 
the moment he crossed the frontiers he seems to have 
got rid of his care and discontent. " As I crossed the , 
Pyrenees," he says, " I left with France the rain and bad 
weather, and found a pure sky and a charming temper- 
ature, with scenery and views changing every moment." 
As he went on, " all seemed flowers and fruits." For 
once in his life he found himself appreciated at what he 
considered his proper value, and it is with evidently 
gratified vanity that he tells us how he was feted on 
his progress from town to town; how he was received 
with enthusiasm by the populace of Madrid, and " almost 
stifled with compliments" by the Spanish grandees ; how 



SAINT SIMON IN SPAIN. 2^5 

he went to Court in a State carriage drawn by eight 
horses, with twenty - five other coaches following his 
own ; with what dignity he advanced up the long Hall 
of Mirrors; and with what a stately grace Philip Y. an- 
nounced his satisfaction at the marriage, " using such a 
marvellously judicious choice of words and expressions, 
that I thought I heard that grand master of ceremonies, 
the late king [Louis XIV.], himself addressing me." 

Madrid was illuminated, a State ball was given in 
honour of the occasion, and Saint Simon, who seems to 
have amused that solemn Court by his vivacity and 
sprightliness, received the royal command to dance. 
He tells us that, though he had not danced for thirty 
years and had a heavy coat on, he bore himself bravely 
in minuet and quadrille ; and that he was refreshed, 
after his exertions (like Mr Pepys) " by a glass of excel- 
lent neat wine." 

Their Catholic Majesties also commanded his attend- 
ance at a royal battue, where the game included almost 
every four-footed creature, from wild-boars to polecats. 
Saint Simon's own contribution would scarcely have 
been a matter of congratulation to a modern sports- 
man. "I shot a fox," he says complacently, "a little 
before the proper time ; " by which he means that 
the Crown -Prince, who was in the same cache, ought 
to have had the chance of shooting the fox first, — 
for at the battue, as everywhere else, royalty took pre- 
cedence. 

Then he visited the Escurial, where he showed such 
insatiable curiosity, and asked so many embarrassing 
questions, that one of the monks in charge completely 
lost his temper. 



206 SAINT SIMON. 

" And so we did tlie round of the mortuary chamber, talk- 
ing over and discussing all we saw. As we passed to the 
further end of the room, the coffin of the unhappy Don Carlos 
met our view. 

"VAs for him,' said I, 'it is well known how and why 
he died.' 

" At this speech the fat monk stammered, and maintained 
that he had died from natural causes, and began to declaim 
against the stories which he said had been spread about his 
death. I only smiled, and said I allowed it was not true 
that he had died by having his veins opened. These words 
completed the irritation of the monk, who began to babble 
in a sort of fury. At first I amused myself by listening in 
silence, and then I remarked that the king, soon after his 
arrival in Spain, had the curiosity to have the coffin of Don 
Carlos opened, and that I had been told by a man who was 
present (it was Louville), the prince's head had been found 
between his legs, and that his father, Philip II., had caused 
him to be beheaded in prison in his own presence. 

" ' Very well ! ' cried the monk, in a furious passion ; ' ap- 
parently it was because Don Carlos had thoroughly deserved 
his fate, for Philip II. had permission from the Pope to do 
it.' And then he began to extol with all his might the 
marvellous piety and justice of Philip II., and the boundless 
power of the Pope, and denounced the heresy of the man 
who doubted that his Holiness had not the power to ordain, 
decide, and dispose of all as he chose. 

" Such is the fanaticism of countries under the Inquisition, 
where learning is a crime, and where ignorance and super- 
stition are the cardinal virtues. Although my official char- 
acter would have protected me, I did not choose to dispute 
or have a ridiculous scene with this piffre of a monk. I 
contented myself with laughing, and making signs to those 
who were with me to keep silence. So the monk said all he 
liked at his leisure, and went on a long while without being 
able to check his passion. Perhaps he perceived by our faces 
that we were laughing at him, though without words or 



SAINT SIMON IN SPAIN. 207 

gestures. At last he showed us the rest of the chamber, still 
fuming with rage,Nand then we descended to the Pantheon." 

Saint Simon's visit to the Escurial was disagreeably 
interrupted by an attack of the small-pox, which laid 
him up there for more than six weeks. He was, how- 
ever, carefully nursed and attended by the King of 
Spain's physician (a " M. Higgins "), and his recovery 
was complete. He recommends "broth made of beef 
and partridge, with a little Eota wine," as an excellent 
diet during convalescence. 

On his return to Madrid he found everything in readi- 
ness for the marriage of the Prince of the Asturias with 
the Regent's daughter, Avho had arrived at the Spanish 
Court. Cardinal Borgia had been sent from Rome ex- 
pressly to officiate, and the ceremony was to take place 
in a private chapel of the jDalace. Saint Simon happened 
to be one of the first to arrive on the scene. 

" Cardinal Borgia, in his pontifical robes, stood at a corner 
of the reading-desk, with his face turned towards me, learn- 
ing his lesson between two chaplains in surplices, who held 
a large book open before him. The good prelate did not 
know how to read in it ; he made an effort, read in a high 
voice, and all wrong. His chaplains took him up ; he got 
angry and grumbled at them ; began again, and was again 
corrected, and got more and more angry, until at last he 
turned round and shook them by their surplices. I laughed 
to my heart's content, for he saw nothing — he was so occu- 
pied and perplexed by his lesson. 

" Then the king, the queen, the prince, and the princesses 
arrived, with all the Court, and their arrival was announced 
in a loud tone. ' Let them wait ! ' cried the Cardinal in a 
fury ; 'I am not ready.' In fact, they were obliged to wait 
while he went on with his lesson, with his face redder than 
his hat, and all the time in a furious passion.'" 



JOS SAINT SIMON. 

However, Cardinal Borgia, with the assistance of the 
chaplains, at last succeeded in getting through the mar- 
riage service ; and when the ceremony was over. Saint 
Simon was made happy even beyond his utmost hopes. 
Both he and his second son were raised to the rank of 
Spanish grandees of the first class, and his eldest son 
(the Vidame de Chartres) was invested with the Golden 
Fleece at a long and stately ceremonial that delighted 
his father's heart ; the king himself giving the accolade 
with the sword of the founder and grand -captain of 
the Order, Don Gonzalo de Cordova. Then followed 
the usual marriage festivities, — banquets, illuminations, 
torch-races, and naval combats ; and after a six months' 
visit. Saint Simon left Madrid highly delighted both 
with Spain and the Spaniards, and especially pleased at 
having so nobly " branched " his family. 

Soon after his return to Versailles a violent scene took 
place between Cardinal Dubois and Marshal Villeroy, 
the young king's governor. The Marshal was clearly 
the aggressor in this quarrel. On some slight provoca- 
tion he had stormed and threatened, and made such an 
uproar, that he was almost dragged out of the room by 
Cardinal Bissy, who was the only witness of this extra- 
ordinary interview. Dubois himself rushed off at once 
to the Regent's cabinet, and burst into the room, where 
the prince was talking with Saint Simon, " like a whirl- 
wind, with his eyes starting from his head," and scarcely 
able to articulate between rage and fear. He put it 
plainly to the Regent that he must choose once for all 
between himself and Villeroy, for, after what had passed, 
they could not both remain at Versailles. Orleans in 
this case did not take long to make up his mind. He 



i 



DUBOIS PRIME MINISTER. 209 

had been provoked more than once by the insolent acts 
of Yilleroy, and the very next morning the Marshal was 
arrested, and after " exhaling his anger," as Saint Simon 
calls it, in his own chateau, he was sent into honourable 
banishment as governor of Lyons. 

Thenceforward Dubois had nothing between himself 
and the highest office in the State, and in little more than 
a week after the disappearance of Villeroy he was formally 
named Prime Minister by the Regent. This evil day 
had long been foreseen and dreaded by Saint Simon. 
Sooner or later he had felt certain that Dubois would 
engross the supreme power, and would be to the Re- 
gent Avhat the Mayors of the Palace had been to the 
rois faineants of earlier history ; and he had watched 
Orleans drifting hopelessly and helplessly to this inevit- 
able end. Orleans had himself foreseen it, had dreaded 
it like Saint Simon, and yet, in his " incurable feeble- 
ness," could not or would not make the slightest effort to 
save himself. One morning he had been complaining 
with unusual bitterness of the void he felt in his life, 
of his indifference to the pleasures of wine and love, and 
of his weariness of State affairs ; and then Saint Simon 
broke the silence he had maintained for years as to the 
Regent's private life, and made the last, the strongest, 
and perhaps the most eloquent of all his appeals to the 
friend of his boyhood — urging him to dismiss his roues 
and his mistresses, to give up his notorious suppers at the 
Palais Royal, to do justice to his natural abilities, and 
above all, not to enslave himself to a Prime Minister. 
Orleans listened in silence and embarrassment. 

" Then he sat up straight on his chair. ' Ah, well ! ' said 
he, ' I will go and plant my cabbages at Villars-Cotterets.' 

F.C. X. O 



210 SAINT SIMON. 

Then he got up and began to walk about the room, and I 
with him. 

" Finding himself near the wall, at the corner of his desk 
where there were two chairs (1 still see where they were 
standing), he drew me by the arm towards one of them, 
while he set himself down upon the other, and then, turning 
completely round to face me, asked me sharply if I did not 
remember to have seen Dubois valet to Saint Laurent, and 
thinking himself then only too fortunate to be that ; and 
then he enumerated all the different steps and stages of the 
Cardinal's fortunes U]d to that very moment, and then he 
exclaimed — 

" 'And yet he is not content. He persecutes me to get 
himself declared Prime Minister ; and I am perfectly certain 
that, even when he is that, still he will not be content ; and 
what the devil can he be after that?' 

"And then, all at once, he answered his own question, 
murmuring to himself — ^Sefaire Dieu le Fere, — if he can.' 

" 'Oh, most aesuredly,' said I ; 'it is just the very thing 
we may be quite certain he will do. It is for you, sir, who 
know him so well, to see if you are well advised to make 
yourself his footstool for him to step over your head.' 

"'Oh, I will take good care to stop his doing that,' he 
answered; and then he began to walk about the room again 
afresh." 

The next day this conversation was renewed on the 
same subject — Saint Simon being vehement and eloquent, 
as usual, against the very idea of a Prime Minister, and 
Orleans listening gloomily and patiently as before 

"A long silence followed my strong protest. The Duke's 
head, supported by his hands, had by degrees sunk almost 
on his desk. He raised it at last, looked at me with a 
sullen and desponding air, and then lowered his eyes, which 
seemed to me full of shame, and still remained some time 



DUBOIS PRIME MINISTER. 211 

seated as he was. At last lie rose and took several turns 
about the room, still saying nothing. But what was my 
astonishment and confusion when he at last broke his 
silence, stopped shorr, turned half towards me without 
raising his eyes, and said all at once in a sad low voice — 

" ' We must stop all this, I must declare him Prime 
Minister almost immediately.' 

" ' Sir,' said I, ' you are wise and good, and, above all — the 
master. Have you any commands to give me for Meudon 1 ' 

" I abruptly made him a reverence, and was leaving the 
room, when he called out, ' But I shall see you again soon, 
shall I not V I made no reply, and closed the door. 

" The faithful and patient Belle He was still waiting out- 
side, and had stayed in the same place where I had left him, 
at the entrance, for two mortal hours, without counting the 
time that he had waited before my arrival.^ He caught hold 
of me as soon as he saw me, and earnestly whispered in my 
ear, ' Eh, well ! how do we stand ? ' 

" ' Nothing can be better,' I answered, restraining myself 
as well as I could. ' I regard the matter as settled, and it 
is on the point of being declared.' 

" ' That is too delightful/ said he. ' I must go at once and 
relieve our friend's anxiety.' 

" I gave him no message, but hastened to get rid of him 
and be in peace at Meudon, and exhale my indignation at 
my ease." 

The very next day Saint Simon called on Dubois 
to compliment him on being Prime Minister, and was 
warmly thanked for his disinterested friendship, and for 
having so successfully advocated his claims ! " I was 
not deceived by all this," says Saint Simon, "for I 
saw clearly that he only wanted to throw the odium of 

1 Belle He was the confidant of Dubois, and was in this pase. 
Saint Simon thinks, acting as his spy. It was fortunate tliat he 
could not hear or see through the doors of the cabinet. 



212 SAINT SIMON. 

his promotion on my shoulders." Possibly Saint Simon 
thought that all was fair in war against such an adver- 
sary ; but his double-dealing and hypocrisy (to use the 
mildest terms for it) are strangely at variance with the 
frank outspoken honesty that he so often claims to be 
the distinctive mark of his character. But it may have 
been, as M. Cheruel suggests, that he had himself un- 
consciously deteriorated in the demoralising atmosphere 
of the Regency. 

Cardinal Dubois, however, did not live long to enjoy 
either his honours or his wealth, computed at £40,000 
a-year in our money. In the following year (1723) he 
underwent a painful operation, and died miserably after 
it, — refusing to receive the Sacrament, and " gnashing his 
teeth at his surgeons, in the greatest rage and despair 
at having to give up his life." 

"What a monster of fortune," Saint Simon goes on, 
" and from what a low origin he sprang, and how sud- 
denly and fearfully he was cast down ! Truly to him 
might be applied the words of the Psalmist : ' I have 
seen the wicked man exalted like the cedars of Lebanon : 
I passed by, and lo ! he was gone, and his place could 
nowhere be found.' " 



213 



CHAPTEE XVL 

SAINT SIMON IN RETIREMENT. 

Saint Simon took no part in public affairs after that 
strange interview with the Regent described in the 
last chapter. He felt that his day, such as it was, 
had gone by, — that the times were out of joint for 
him. Many of his old friends were dead ; others were 
estranged ; he was slighted by the younger generation ; 
and as for Orleans himself, repugnance, he tells us, began 
to be mingled with the pity he felt for this poor prince. 
The disorder that took place at the consecration of the 
king in 1722 was a sign to him of still worse things that 
were to follow. Rank and precedence, he says, were 
utterly disregarded ', the nobility were excluded from 
their proper dignities ; the complete re-establishment of 
" the bastards " was evidently near at hand. And thus, 
seeing nothuig but humiliation and annoyance in what 
was passing round him. Saint Simon goes back to the 
past, and dwells at some length on the career of his 
brother-in-law, Lauzun, whose life had been a succession 
of marvellous adventures. He dwells upon it, he says, 
for a special reason : — 



214 SAINT SIMON. 

" Another feeling has prolonged my recital. I am drawing 
near a term I fear to touch, because my desires cannot be in 
harmony with the truth : they are ardent, and in consequence 
bitterly painful, because the other sentiment is terrible, and 
leaves not the least room for any possible palliation. The 
terror of arriving at this term has stopped me short, has 
arrested my hand, has frozen my blood. 

"It will be seen at once that I am about to speak of the 
death, and the manner of the death, of the Duke of Orleans; 
and after such a tender and long attachment between us — 
for it lasted all his life, and will last all my life — the terrible 
story of his death has pierced my heart with terror and 
sorrow^ for him. It makes me shudder to my very marrow 
with the horror of the thought that God, in His anger, 
granted his prayer that he might die suddenly." 

The Eegent's health had been hopelessly shattered by 
the excesses of thirty years ; and one morning Saint 
Simon (who rarely saw him in these latter days) vras 
horrified to see the change that had come over him. 
His face was flushed almost purple, his air was dull and 
heavy, and his utt^'rance was so thick that he could 
scarcely articulate. It was the beginning of the end. 
A few days afterwards, while Orleans was talking to 
one of his mistresses, he suddenly fell backwards in an 
apoplectic fit, and never recovered either his speech or 
consciousness. Before Saint Simon could reach Ver- 
sailles the Regent was dead, and with his death these 
Memoirs come to an appropriate conclusion. 

Saint Simon both feared and distrusted the Duke 
of Bourbon, who now became Prime Minister ; and of 
Cardinal Fleury — the young king's tutor — who suc- 
ceeded Bourbon, he speaks with all his accustomed 
bitterness. " This prelate," he tells us, " concealed 



SAINT SIMON'S DOMESTIC AFFLICTIONS. 215 

under his apparent modesty and gentleness a sublime- 
ly ungrateful, vainglorious, and revengeful heart." It 
was not long before he received a polite hint from 
rieury that his presence at Versailles would be dis- 
pensed with. "Very little was wanting," he says, "to 
confirm me in taking the course I had long ago decided 
on. I went to Paris with the firm resolution of not 
appearing before the new masters of the kingdom, ex- 
cept on those rare occasions when I should be obliged 
to pay the indispensable visits of ceremony." For the 
remainder of his life he divided his time between his 
town house in the Eue St Dominique and his country 
chateau.j Troubles came thickly upon him in his later 
years. In 1743 he lost his wife — "that pearl of in- 
estimable price," as he calls her ; and a few years after- 
wards he lost his eldest son, the Duke of Euffec. His 
only daughter, who was deformed and repulsively ugly, 
had made an unhappy marriage : his second son was 
hopelessly ill of an incurable disease. Meanwhile his 
own affairs grew more and more involved, and his debts 
at last amounted to upwards of £60,000. 

Beyond these sad facts of his family history, and 
occasional references in the songs and pasquinades of 
the day, we know scarcely anything of Saint Simon's 
private life, except that he read and wrote perpetually, 
— finding, perhaps, as others have done before and since, 
greater satisfaction and content among his books and 
papers than had ever fallen to his lot as a councillor 
or politician ; and finding also a secret and increasing 
pleasure in recording all that he had seen and suffered, 
and in making his final appeal to posterity to judge 
between him and his enemies. 



^ 



216 SAINT SIMON. 

How busily he was occupied in these years of enforced 
retirement is shown by the voluminous manuscripts he 
has left behind him ; and it is clear that he spared 
neither time nor labour in his historical researches, con- 
sulting both men and books, and (as has been said) 
annotating Dangeau's Memoirs, in order to verify his 
facts and dates. Among his countless portfolios of 
essays and treatises there are two of especial interest. 
One is the ^^Paquet d. Espagne,^^ on which M. Drumont 
is now at work ; and the other bears the whimsical title 
of "Ce7idres que fai vues a ^^/zmei^rs depuis 1723," 
which M. Baschet thinks may possibly turn out to be 
the promised continuation of his Memoirs up to the 
death of Cardinal Fleury. 

Saint Simon died at the age of eighty in his house at 
Paris, and was buried — as he had expressly desired— by 
the side of his wife in the crypt of the parish church 
of La Ferte Vidame. But in 1794 a party of red Re- 
publicans tore the bodies from their coffins, and threw 
them into a common trench outside the churchyard ; 
and thus, as it were by the irony of fate, the proud 
Duke, who in his lifetime had regarded even the bour- 
geois as beneath his notice, was destined after his death 
to share a grave with the vilest of the vile. 



END OF SAINT SIMON, 



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